Publicity Events Come in All Sizes
December 18, 2006
"I got my undergrad degree from Stanford, but I got my Ph.D. in Newark, and some of my best professors were here in Brick Towers," Newark Mayor Cory A. Booker told a New York Times reporter recently. He was preparing to leave his "bachelor-pad" apartment in Brick Towers, one of Newark's worst - and certainly its most notorious - low-income buildings.
Booker became famous after he moved into the building to help convince the landlord and the city to rebuild the drug and violence-infested buildings with new ones. The new ones may not be any better than the old ones (the drugs and violence were the products of its tenants, not its construction materials), but I love the audacity of what he did. It had the publicity power of Joe Vitale's restaurant-lottery hoax - but with much greater credibility. (You can hear Joe's story on ETR's Info Marketing Bootcamp library of DVD recordings.)
It is interesting to think about how Booker made that decision and if, when he made it, he realized how it would change his life. It reminds me of what happened to Rosa Parks when she decided to stay seated that day in 1955 in Montgomery.
Booker's decision to move into a bad neighborhood and run his mayoral campaign from there was more calculating than Parks', to be sure, but it nevertheless yielded rewards that must have gone beyond his expectations. It helped get him elected - but it also put him on the path for even greater public prominence.
His story was documented in a film that garnered an Oscar nomination. I wouldn't be surprised to see something bigger come out of it in the next few years.
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posted by M. Masterson @ 9:05 AM,
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