How dropping an ipad from space made the headlines

There is a great tendency in PR to think around, think through and think over the eternal problem of “how do we get this fundamentally boring product into the news?”.

Sometimes, as iPad case manufacturer G-Form has shown, the obvious route is also the best one.

So if you make ballistics-grade cases for the world’s most talked-about gadget, what do you do?

You find the most extreme ways of proving that your precious piece of kit will survive all manner of G-Form-inflicted falls and tumbles, and set about creating a lovely piece of video showing your case protecting said technological wonder as it is dropped from 100,000 feet after being tied to a weather balloon.  

The idea follows the pattern of the infamous “Will it Blend?” videos (whereby a variety of gadgets that were at the time newsworthy were placed in a BlendTec blender to show its qualities of endurance).

And indeed G-Form has been dropping iPads from ever-greater heights in their bid to make the news. They started off with a 60 foot fall onto concrete, followed by lobbing one off a hot air balloon and then dropping one from a plane. However, it is the space stunt that has captured the headlines.

Why does it work? Because, folks, it’s simple. A product demo taken to an extreme.

But more than that, it capitalises on the media-worthiness of Apple – there is a community of folk worldwide who will write about anything related to the beast of Cupertino. The thought that someone has gone out to wilfully destroy an iPad will no doubt have made them collectively clench their buttocks in disgust before they punch the air in delight as their beloved gadget hits the deck unscathed.

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”