Leaving Las Vegas
An official at a parody software maker thinks it's a big joke that his company got tossed from Comdex.
"Did we get expelled from Comdex? Sure. Are we mad and upset about it? The answer is no," said Rob Halligan, vice president of marketing at Palladium Interactive in Larkspur, Calif. "It's just confirmation for us that the industry is taking itself far too seriously."
Palladium aims to fix that, through its subsidiary Parroty Interactive. Parroty makes parody CD-ROMs -- one is PYST, a take-off on the popular game MYST -- and has a new parody, Microshaft WinBlows 98, coming out in January.
Parroty said it hired a Bill Gates look-alike to promote the CD-ROM. The Faux-Gates walked around the show floor at Comdex, wearing a T-shirt promoting the game and handing out buttons and cards.
He got away with the blatant violation of Comdex rules for the better part of two days before security guards found him and asked him, and some Parroty personnel accompanying him, to leave the show floor.
After the Parroty people were caught passing out literature in bus lines outside the convention center, their badges were confiscated, effectively ending Parroty's promotional efforts, since the company did not have a booth at Comdex.
But William Sell, group show manager for Comdex, thinks that Parroty may be pulling a fast one on folks.
"I actually think they're staging a guerrilla marketing campaign here," Sell said. He speculated that Parroty's press release announcing its banning from Comdex might just have been a spoof, and that the company may not have had anyone at the show.
Parroty has photos on its Web site purporting to be the Gates look-alike at Comdex, but Sell points out that software lets people be in places they haven't actually been.
"You can doctor anything," Sell said. "Somebody put me in Red Square."
Sell said if it was, in fact, a hoax, he wouldn't mind.
"They're having fun, and they're poking fun at the media at a major event. We don't have a problem with that. This industry is all about cute, unique marketing, and it's always interesting to see what's the next big thing somebody can pull off."
But Comdex spokeswoman Sue Lonergan confirmed that "an individual, not an exhibitor" was walking the show floor and distributing materials, which is against Comdex's rules. She noted that perhaps 20 people a day get asked to leave for the same reason.
She also pointed to the variety acts on Comdex's floor as a perfect rebuttal to the claim that the computer industry is humorless.
She then said "it would be a shame if they got some press out of this."