| Any
publicity is good publicity. If that lesson has ever been doubted,
GoldenPalace.com is a living testimony. Golden Palace stands as one
of the oldest and most trusted online casinos on the internet.
However, their advertising campaigns stand as the oddest and most
inventive publicity stunts in the world. The online casino has done
everything from paid streakers to visit the Winter Olympics, used
professional boxers as human bill boards, and making very, very odd
purchases. Now the casino has moved into leasing.
Golden Palace spent $30,000
dollars to lease an Academy Award for 999 years. The deal only
partially fulfills a long-time goal of the online casino according
to casino spokesperson Drew Black, “We’ve been trying to buy an
Oscar, but the academy’s legal agreement clearly states that most of
them can’t be sold, so we had to think creatively. The agreement
says nothing about leasing.”
The Oscar currently in
Golden Palace’s possession was awarded to Morris Stoloff for
achievement in scoring of a musical picture for his work on “Song
Without End” in 1960. Since 1951, the academy has had award
recipients sign off that the Oscar statuettes are the property of
the academy. This agreement has allowed the academy to block public
auctions and private sales of the awards. It seems that the Golden
Palace casino group is the first to think of leasing an Oscar.
Though the extreme campaigns
bring attention to the casino, their primary goal, they have also
used the attention for good. It is not uncommon that Golden Palace
takes the time to draw focus to charity issues. Black elaborates,
“Being in the public eye as a result of this campaign, we feel
obligated to mention the efforts of One.org. We aren’t formally
affiliated with them but we urge people to go to
www.One.org and find out more about this wonderful charity that
seeks to ‘make poverty history’.
Golden Palace seems thrilled
by their Oscar triumph, but not yet satisfied. Black says, “We’d
like other Oscar, Grammy, Emmy and Golden Globe winners to know that
we’re open to leasing their statuettes, too. It’s a great chance
for them to lease their awards to an organization that plans to put
them on public view so they can be shared with everyone.”
The online casino has a
history of bizarre investments. They have purchased a Virgin Mary
Grilled Cheese Sandwich, actor William Shatner’s Kidney Stone,
Britney Spears’ Pregnancy Test, and a list of other oddities. The
casino intends to use these items and their new Oscar, as exhibition
pieces in a traveling museum.
●
Return to News
|
