Written by: Tommy Rowson
Published: Wednesday 13th August 2014

Clubs often give away free cheap shots (pretending they're free expensive shots) in an attempt to get people into their venues. But what are the best publicity stunts of all time...?

For a long time everyone hated Donald Trump, mainly because he's an arsehole, but also, because he very much looks like an arsehole. He needed a change of image. At the time it looked like that Phil Collins haircut circa No Jacket Required (bald on top with long hair round the sides) would never be beaten, but Donald Trump Donald Trumped it with the best haircut money could conceive.

People had seen comb-overs before, but usually from one side of the head to the other. This one was designed by Escher and was combed every which way but loose to defy laws of physics, nature and attraction. To top even that, it was the exact same luminous orange colour as his luminous orange face and most importantly it worked (unless he steps out in the wind). With the confidence gained from looking like a hunk he went on become a billionaire, whereas at the time he was merely a multi-millionaire.

Richard Branson is another billionaire. It's hard to get the public on your side when you have that much cash but he came up with the great idea of crashing hot air balloons into the sea and it humanised him. That was a major turning point. People looked deep within themselves and decided that, yes, they would buy 5 DVDs for £30 (or roughly £6 each for every film Nicolas Cage has ever made).

Most people found watching golf incredibly boring as it was all middle-aged white men, so Nike introduced young black golfer Tiger Woods. He drew record viewing figures and proved such a popular character that Nike decided he should do everything on offer for the next 10 years. But after a while people got bored of watching Tiger, so Nike came up with a jumping-the-shark twist of having him turn out to be a sex-addict super-villain.

When his wife confronted him he fled the house and crashed his SUV straight into a tree. As if that wasn't enough (and it was), he was then fined $164 for careless driving. But the story didn't catch the golf nation's heart and Nike were forced to temporarily retire the Tiger Woods character and bring in a new Scrappy Doo-esque character, Rory McIlroy, who is tiny but can still hit the ball further than anyone else.

Pepsi have had hundreds of innovative promotional stunts though not all have worked. They've tried changing their logo, painting a plane blue and making people directly compare between the taste of Pepsi and Coke, which didn't work as it just reconfirmed that Coke is a lot nicer. It wasn't until 1985 that they hit on a truly remarkable campaign when they set fire to Michael Jackson during the filming of an advert. Sales went through the roof and they climbed from a respectable distant second in market share to a bit closer second.

'Tommy Rowson: Down and Out in Powys and London' is at the Udderbelly (Bristo Square) at 6:45pm until the 24th August.