A 30-Day Date for All To Watch
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Call it off-the-wall or Wild West advertising, but a Big Apple ad campaign that is in the works will surely be the talk of the town. Or perhaps the world.
Some advertising executives describe it as one of the most memorable and unusual promotional stunts in the history of New York City advertising and one that should snare huge press coverage.
The premise is wild. Assuming it all comes to pass as planned, a man and woman – attractive, unmarried, and unknown to one another – will live together in a corner storefront on a busy New York City street that will be furnished as a studio apartment. They will live there for 30 days without leaving and without access to TV, radio, phones, or other forms of communication with the outside world.
The storefront apartment will have floor-to-ceiling windows, as well as microphones, so anything the man and woman say and do will be heard and watched from the outside. Virtually everything will be in full view of the live public. The “apartment” will have all the necessary features of day-to-day living, including a bed, a toilet with a wrap-around curtain (although the subject’s ankles will be visible), a foggy shower stall (silhouettes will be visible), a couch, dining table, and chairs.
Likewise, the apartment will contain several Web cameras that will transmit video to the Internet, enabling viewers worldwide to watch. So anything the couple says and does will not only be heard and seen by passers-by, but by anyone with access to the Internet, as well.
In effect, the campaign is taking that oft-quoted phase – living in a fish bowl – to a whole new level.
A brainchild of 42-year-old advertising executive, Alan Wolan, this novel campaign – which he believes will produce about $10 million worth of worldwide press coverage – is still in the exploratory stage. He said the final details with the proposed joint sponsors, IKEA and Fresh Direct, as well as the selection of the man and woman and the specific location, have yet to be resolved. “But it’s a 10 it will happen, and it could all come to fruition within a few weeks,” Mr. Wolan said.
Plans call for IKEA to provide all the furnishings and Fresh Direct to deliver fresh groceries every day. Each sponsor, Mr. Wolan said, would shell out $100,000 for the month long promotion, which, he noted, has a projected October kickoff. The proposed advertising slogans from the sponsors: “With IKEA, you never want to leave the house” and “With Fresh Direct, you’ll never need to leave the house.” Neither company could be reached for comment over the weekend.
Why is he picking a single man and woman instead of a married couple? “Because of the unknown quality,” Mr. Wolan explained, “the added appeal to the public as to what might happen between the two people.”
Mr. Wolan, a former executive at DMB&B, is the president of GoGorilla Media, which is handling the storefront promotion, as well as the skipper of two affiliated advertising companies, Go-Card and GoPoster. The thrust of all three – which opened in 1994 and are expected to generate 2005 sales of about $12 million, up from $10 million in 2004 – is the use of alternative and unconventional advertising methods.
This trio of ad companies number about 400 clients, among them Sony, ABC-TV, AOL, the Gap, MTV, and Apple Computer.
Included among the firms’ unconventional ad strategies are:
* Advertising at construction sites around the city.
* Advertising on money at bars and restaurants (promotional stickers are applied to your change).
* Advertising on cell phones (text messages promote a company’s product).
* Distribution of thousands of corked bottles at beaches with promotional messages inside.
* Distributing eye-catching postcards at bars, restaurants, cafes, and health clubs that also promote companies’ products and can be mailed to your family and friends.
GoGorilla, in fact, is currently working on an ABC campaign to promote its upcoming new series, Commander in Chief, starring Geena Davis by sticking Ms. Davis’s picture over that of George Washington on $1 bills and distributing them as change, primarily in bars and restaurants.
“My mission,” Mr. Wolan says, “is to broadly go where no advertising has gone before. That’s where I’ve gone, and it’s where I’m still going.”
Meanwhile, the question remains as to the likelihood of GoGorilla’s success with its storefront promotion.
Burt Manning, the former chairman and chief executive of J. Walter Thompson and widely regarded as one of the country’s foremost advertising minds, views the promotion as primarily a stunt.
“It will certainly appeal to that part of a person’s psyche that wants to be a peeping Tom, which is the case with an awful lot of people,” he said. “If something comes out of it, such as the man and woman getting married, you could see a series of such promotions,” he said, adding that some people will find it very exciting and others obscene. It’s advertising 101, raising awareness to a higher level.” The economic payoff for the sponsors is unknown, Mr. Manning said, but if it works, other advertising clients, such as clothing retailers and manufacturers, will be in on it in a second.