Shep Gordon: “Make Parents Angry”

Shep Gordon had a knack for “mak­ing par­ents angry.”

Shep Gordon is a well-known enter­tain­ment industry fig­ure renowned for his cre­at­ive pub­lic rela­tions and tal­ent man­age­ment approach. 

Gordon gained fame as a tal­ent agent and man­ager for vari­ous high-pro­file celebrit­ies, par­tic­u­larly in the music and culin­ary industries.

Here we go:

Shock-Rock with Alice Cooper

Gordon is per­haps best known for his work with Alice Cooper, whom he man­aged for a sig­ni­fic­ant part of the rock star’s career. ¹Beyond music, Gordon also played a pivotal role in pop­ular­ising the concept of the “celebrity chef.” He rep­res­en­ted sev­er­al renowned chefs, such as Emeril Lagasse and Wolfgang Puck, help­ing to … Continue read­ing

Gordon was instru­ment­al in devel­op­ing Cooper’s shock-rock per­sona, using out­rageous stunts and con­tro­ver­sial events to gen­er­ate pub­li­city and build Cooper’s brand. 

Such events included fam­ous PR stunts like the “chick­en incid­ent” at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival con­cert in 1969, the Oxford Circus traffic jam, and the stra­tegic use of a bill­board on Sunset Boulevard.

The Chicken Incident

The “Chicken Incident” is one of the most fam­ous stunts in rock his­tory. It is often asso­ci­ated with Alice Cooper and his man­ager, Shep Gordon. It occurred dur­ing the 1969 Toronto Rock and Roll Revival concert.

As the story goes, a live chick­en some­how made its way onto the stage dur­ing Alice Cooper’s per­form­ance. There are vari­ous accounts of how the chick­en got there, with some sug­gest­ing it was thrown on stage by the audi­ence, while oth­ers claim it was part of the band’s props.

Cooper, who reportedly had­n’t had much exper­i­ence with farm anim­als, assumed the chick­en could fly and tossed it back into the crowd.

The crowd, how­ever, was less than gentle with the bird. In the con­cer­t’s heated atmo­sphere, the audi­ence tore the chick­en apart. The incid­ent quickly garnered media atten­tion, with reports dra­mat­ic­ally and incor­rectly claim­ing that Cooper had bit­ten the head off the chick­en on stage. ²Ozzy Osbourne, the fam­ous lead vocal­ist of Black Sabbath, is infam­ous for an incid­ent where he bit the head off a bat on stage. This occurred dur­ing a con­cert in 1982 in Des Moines, Iowa. As the … Continue read­ing

This event turned into a massive PR moment. The story con­trib­uted sig­ni­fic­antly to Cooper’s emer­ging repu­ta­tion as a shock­ing and con­tro­ver­sial per­former. It solid­i­fied his image in rock and roll and marked a turn­ing point in his career, gar­ner­ing sig­ni­fic­ant media cov­er­age and pub­lic attention.

Shep Gordon recog­nised this incid­ent’s poten­tial to enhance Cooper’s brand as a shock rock artist. He did­n’t dis­pel the exag­ger­ated rumours, under­stand­ing that the con­tro­versy would only add to Cooper’s grow­ing fame. 

The chick­en incid­ent became a legendary moment in rock his­tory and an early example of how con­tro­versy and shock value can be used effect­ively in pub­lic rela­tions to build a celebrity’s image.

The Billboards on Sunset Boulevard

Shep Gordon’s stra­tegic use of a bill­board on Sunset Boulevard is anoth­er fam­ous example of his innov­at­ive approach to pub­li­city and pub­lic rela­tions. The stunt, designed to pro­mote Alice Cooper, was cru­cial in estab­lish­ing Cooper’s image and fame in the early 1970s.

The stunt involved pla­cing a giant bill­board on the icon­ic Sunset Strip in Hollywood, a loc­a­tion known for its high vis­ib­il­ity and pop­ular­ity among the enter­tain­ment industry and fans alike. 

The bill­board fea­tured an image of Alice Cooper, clad in noth­ing but a snake, which was a part of his shock rock per­sona. This pro­voc­at­ive and con­tro­ver­sial image was impossible for pass­ersby to ignore and quickly became a top­ic of conversation.

The bill­board not only caught the eye of every­one who passed by but also garnered atten­tion from the media. It was an overt chal­lenge to advert­ising and pub­lic pro­mo­tion norms, fit­ting per­fectly with the rebel­li­ous and bound­ary-push­ing brand that Cooper and Gordon were building.

The Oxford Circus Traffic Jam

In 1972, there was con­cern over slow tick­et sales dur­ing Alice Cooper’s show at the Empire Pool, Wembley. To boost interest, Gordon, along with the band and Beatles asso­ci­ate Derek Taylor, devised a pro­mo­tion­al stunt involving a truck car­ry­ing the image of a nude Alice Cooper with a snake. 

On June 29^th, this truck “broke down” at Oxford Circus (not Piccadilly Circus as often repor­ted), caus­ing sig­ni­fic­ant traffic jams and attract­ing pub­lic atten­tion. However, con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, there’s no con­crete evid­ence that this incid­ent received nation­al TV cov­er­age or front-page news­pa­per atten­tion. ³SickThingsUK. (2014). The Billboard Incident. Sickthingsuk​.co​.uk. https://www.sickthingsuk.co.uk/10-trivia/t‑billboard.php

It’s spec­u­lated that loc­al London media, par­tic­u­larly radio, might have men­tioned the traffic dis­rup­tion, and pos­sibly loc­al papers covered the story the fol­low­ing day. Despite the lack of wide­spread media evid­ence, the stunt remained a legendary part of Alice Cooper’s lore for over 40 years. ⁴The actu­al impact on tick­et sales and wheth­er the show sold out remains unclear, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing the stunt happened just a day before the con­cert.

Shep Gordon: “Make Parents Angry”

Gordon’s approach to PR and man­age­ment involved gen­er­at­ing pub­li­city, craft­ing com­pel­ling nar­rat­ives, and cre­at­ing endur­ing images for his clients.

Did people com­plain? Yes, people did.
Did Gordon get res­ults? Yes, he did.

Is all pub­li­city good pub­li­city? P.T. Barnum thought so.
And then there’s the con­ver­sion the­ory.
And the Norman axiom.

Gordon’s PR work isn’t for the faint of heart. His strategies often involved a mix of tra­di­tion­al media tac­tics and bound­ary-push­ing stunts, demon­strat­ing a deep under­stand­ing of his cli­ent’s needs and the media landscape.

His life and career were the sub­ject of the 2013 doc­u­ment­ary “Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon,” dir­ec­ted by Mike Myers. ⁵Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon. (2023, December 18). In Wikipedia. https://​en​.wiki​pe​dia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​S​u​p​e​r​m​e​n​s​c​h​:​_​T​h​e​_​L​e​g​e​n​d​_​o​f​_​S​h​e​p​_​G​o​r​don

“Make par­ents angry!”
— Shep Gordon, tal­ent man­ager and film agent ⁶Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon. (2023, December 18). In Wikipedia. https://​en​.wiki​pe​dia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​S​u​p​e​r​m​e​n​s​c​h​:​_​T​h​e​_​L​e​g​e​n​d​_​o​f​_​S​h​e​p​_​G​o​r​don

PR Resource: P.T. Barnum

Phineas Taylor Barnum: “There’s No Such Thing as Bad Publicity”

Phineas Taylor (P.T.) Barnum was a 19^th-cen­tury American show­man, entre­pren­eur, and politi­cian known for his lar­ger-than-life per­son­al­ity and uncanny abil­ity to cap­ture the pub­lic’s ima­gin­a­tion. Born in 1810 in Bethel, Connecticut, Barnum rose to prom­in­ence in the enter­tain­ment world by found­ing the Barnum & Bailey Circus, dubbed “The Greatest Show on Earth.”

Barnum pion­eered the art of the press agentry mod­el, employ­ing sen­sa­tion­al­ism and pub­li­city stunts to gen­er­ate interest and draw crowds to his shows. His innov­at­ive mar­ket­ing tech­niques and relent­less pur­suit of the extraordin­ary laid the ground­work for many mod­ern pub­lic rela­tions strategies. 

“Phineas Taylor (P.T.) Barnum (1810−1891) was a savvy pub­li­city show­man, one who impacted par­tic­u­lar aspects of pub­lic rela­tions and advert­ising, primar­ily event plan­ning, event pro­mo­tion and true publicity/​media cov­er­age. Ahead of oth­ers in his time, he actu­ally under­stood the import­ance of media cov­er­age (he star­ted New York’s first illus­trated news­pa­per in 1853) and believed ‘there is no such thing as bad pub­li­city,’ a pop­u­lar phrase many times attrib­uted to Barnum him­self.”
Source: Big Communications ⁷Foster, A. (2017, January 20). The End of a Publicity Era: How P.T Barnum Affected Marketing and PR. Big Communications. https://​big​com​.com/​2​0​1​7​/​0​1​/​p​t​-​b​a​r​n​u​m​-​m​a​r​k​e​t​i​n​g​-​a​n​d​-​p​u​b​l​i​c​-​r​e​l​a​t​i​o​ns/

Although some crit­ics have labelled Barnum as a pur­vey­or of hoaxes and decep­tion, his endur­ing leg­acy as a vis­ion­ary show­man and mas­ter of spec­tacle con­tin­ues to cap­tiv­ate audi­ences and inspire gen­er­a­tions of enter­tain­ers and entrepreneurs.

Learn more: P.T. Barnum: “There’s No Such Thing as Bad Publicity”

PR Resource: Notable PR Contributors

Spin Academy | Online PR Courses

Notable PR Contributors

• Edward Bernays — The Father of PR
• Ivy Lee and the First Press Release
• P.T. Barnum: “There’s No Such Thing as Bad Publicity”
• Walter Lippmann: Public Opinion and Perception Management
• John Dewey and the ‘P’ in Public Relations
• Marshall McLuhan: “The Medium is the Message”
• Leon Festinger — The Psychologist Behind Cognitive Dissonance
• Shep Gordon: “Make Parents Angry”

It’s noted that the gender bias is appar­ent here. I’m cur­rently research­ing a more bal­anced list.

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