A Japanese Zoo and their Rhino stunt

Now the folk I’ve asked are fifty-fifty on whether this is a stunt or whether this “rhino escape drill” was carried out in earnest.

My money is on stunt. And a belter at that.

For those who didn’t catch this gem (and if you didn’t, which rock have you been under lately?), a certain zoo in Japan has captured global media attention with its “drill” for the event that one of its rhinos figured out how to escape from its pen ... 

The genius of this stunt for me is, in part, the bravery of the zoo investing in an idea that, if nothing else, has cost a pretty penny in man-power.

But it’s also an idea that should teach us all that the trick of a great PR stunt for an attraction is that fine balance between being mental enough to make people smile and being taken seriously enough.

It should remind us all that, just sometimes, the silliest of thoughts can take off and capture the imagination. And that no one in this business should shy away from lateral thinking when it comes to creative ideas.

Simple genius.

James Gordon-MacIntosh is a managing partner at Hope&Glory PR and from time-to-time pens Spinning Around, a blog that he describes as “thinking out loud”