Marketing Places, Spaces, People & Ideas

Waste Management, PR and Reality TV

February 12th, 2010 by Mandy Vavrinak

I don’t write as much about Public Relations on this blog because I write A LOT about Public Relations over on the Journal Record’s PR blog.

This week’s PR post is about Waste Mangement COO Larry O’Donnell’s trip to the trenches to experience what his employees actually do during their work day and the chronicling of that experience on the new TV show “Undercover Boss.”

This week’s episode, airing Sunday, features a Hooter’s exec doing the same thing. So… first garbage and portable toilets and second hot wings and hot chicks.

Aside from the potential PR benefits and pitfalls, which I talk about in the Journal Record post, consider for a moment the PR possibilities for the show itself by starting with something everyone thinks is awful (cleaning toilets) and following it with something highly controversial (hot pants or hot wings… why do you go?).

Undercover Boss is pulling out all the stops to launch successfully and letting the buzz in the leadership, management, business, environmental, feminist, manly men and reality TV camps and in social media drive the ratings. What do you think? Too much calculatedness on the part of the show? Do you “trust” that the experience matters to the companies?