Beyond marketing, expect the unexpected

I never have much confidence in the marketing people who tout their extraordinary ability to turn some ordinary guys or events into - well - widespread media coverage. What fascinates me about those pieces of breaking news that were not really newsworthy yet caught public imagination is the unexpectedness of it all.

Take two recent examples. On Jan 17, a group of young people took to Beijing's subway and, at the designated time, whipped out their books. Reading in subway trains is nothing new. What made them unique were the paper books they held in their hands, not the mobile gadgets that are ubiquitous nowadays. So their performance art piece, orchestrated online but never rehearsed, hit a point that resonated with the media people, who arguably have more nostalgia for the dead-tree form of books that is fast receding into memory.

On top of that, there was the whiff of danger of an unregistered but obviously organized event.