PR pointers - Sex doesn't always sell

 On Flickr, people vote with their eyes.  God. Shipwrecks or a Bikini Queen. The eyes have it, and, numbers don't lie!

Pop Quiz - How Well Do You Know People's Tastes?

I have stitched three pictures from my flickr account into one low rez image at the top of this blog post.
In the upper most box is a picture I took underwater in Florida - Christ in the Abyss. It is a picture of a famous statue that is underwater in a Florida Keys party. Bottom left is photographer Dave Tollington's picture of the Titanic Museum in the Smokey Mountains.  Bottom right is my photograph of  SERENA DI MILLO.  I took the picture seconds after she won the 2011 Miss Chin Bikini International Contest here in Toronto at the annual CHIN Picnic.

Which picture do you think has received the most hits???

Drum Roll.

Answer: Never underestimate the drawing power of the Titanic! Close to 3,000 people have looked at that picture. 500 more hits than Christ in the Abyss and 2,500 more hits than Serena!

Thoughts on walking the chicken filled streets of Key West

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Watching the Americans - but not understanding what we see

IT is the Canadian thing. We - all of us Canadians - watch the US. We know all the states. We know all the shows. We know all the trends. But, we don't necessarily understand fully what we are seeing.
We spent a week in the Florida Keys. We dove. We saw plays. We toured art galleries. We could have gone to a Florida pig race, but, went for a nature walk near Marathon instead.
We saw a bumper sticker asking why if they call it Tourist Season, how come Conkers are allowed to shoot them (Conkers are the real Florida Key residents).
We also noticed but failed to comprehend why:
* No one in Key West talked about the hundreds of chickens that live in parks, on people's lawns and in culverts
* No one in Key West seemed to notice that many of the cruise ship tourists visiting the port are seriously obese and had trouble making it across an intersection before the light turned red!
* No one in the Keys seemed to know that the US is fighting in two Wars. No signs of encouragement, no fund raising drives, no flags at half-mast, no mention on the TV, radio or local newspapers
* No one talked about the Gulf Oil Spill
* No one talked about cruelty to cats (trained cats perform at the daily Sunset Busker festival along the Key West town dock)
* No one talked about how you can't buy Ding Dongs and Twinkies in any of Key West's food markets.
CUTLINE: An acquired taste - attending a Florida pig race. Photo by Dave Tollington

The Roadside Shark - Florida Keys' marketing answer to the Giant Gorillia

Fishers of Men
GIANT SHARKS TAKE BITE OUT OF TOURIST WALLETS
(OR SO THEY HOPE)
In the early days of PR and marketing one of the big bold milestone steps was the invention of the sandwich board. Put a huge advertising sign on the front and back of some hapless homeless man and have him stand around busy corners. Was a novel approach and it worked ... until every downtown store had their own walking signs. Message was lost in the crowd, and getting across the street was a chore.
Sandwich boards evolved. Clowns handing out flyers, fuzzy animal characters waving at the cars, life-sized robots in shop doors and windows. In the suburbs, merchants started thinking big. Inflatable Air Dancing Men, Giant, blow-up gorillas in the parking lots and blimps tethered to store ceilings.

The evolution of the signboard has made a science out attracting the attention of consumer. Unfortunately, the science of satisfying consumer demands has not. Just because a store has a great sign doesn't mean that once inside there are good prices, unique items for sale -- sometimes it is just the opposite.
In the Florida Keys, there is but one highway that runs from Key West at the southern tip of Florida, 140 miles north to Key Largo. It is a busy highway and vacationers are wont to barrel down Route 1 as fast as they can. Merchants, looking to slow down motorists and hopefully take bite out of their wallets have updated Giant Gorilla strategy with something befitting the Keys.
Just when I thought it was safe to drive the length of the Keys I spotted a number of over sized creatures of the deep, attached or parked in front of stores, from Mile Marker 1 right to 140.

I took these posted pictures (save for Betsy the Lobster which I linked from Sandwich Girls' Flickr account:http://www.flickr.com/photos/sandwichgirl/4236245532/) in October 2010 while driving the length of Route #1.

CUTLINES:
Top: Over sized Great White Shark head is a daily Kodak moment at the Key West Aquarium. When the cruise ships are in there is a feeding frenzy of photographers
Second from top: Fibreglass Hammerhead wears a tank, weight belt and goggles at Wahoo's seaside restaurant in Islamorada. Very successful in pulling in tourists (we ate there!).
Third from top:Hanging plastic shark at the Islamorada charter fishing dock reels them in (including my wife Maria Nenadovich - the model - and me - the photographer).
Second from bottom: Tilden's dive shop in Marathon has a giant fibreglass Angel Fish in its parking lot.
Bottom: Sandwich Girl's Betsy the Lobster. Fibreglass giant spiny lobster now in front of the Rain Barrel Artists Village in Islamorada. Statue is 30-foot-tall and 40-foot-long

LATE BREAKING PLASTIC SHARK NEWS FROM GEORGETOWN

Just returned from a dive writing trip to the Cayman Islands While in Georgetown (the capitol) taking a surface break, I chanced upon a fibreglass shark outfront of a downtown bar. Not sure how Mr. Jaws lost his right flipper (bite off by an even bigger drunk scuba diver?). Picture taken May 3, 2011