It seems hard to imagine that any senior living company would ever try something like this

By Steve Moran

I am hoping you can use your brilliance to help me with this?

I am not a big fan of my hometown newspaper, the Sacramento Bee. It costs more to subscribe to it than the Wall Street Journal. They only manage to get it delivered about 65% of the time and it is more political editorializing than real news. And yet I keep reading because of the occasional nugget.

 

Pogo Sticks for San Francisco . . .

On Sunday, they published an article titled “Hundreds of pogo sticks headed to San Francisco to replace e-scooters, company promises” (it may be behind a paywall but try opening it in an incognito page). The gist of the story is that a Stockholm-based startup, Cangoroo (does it get any better than this?) says that in light of the scooter, crazy pogo sticks in big cities are the next thing coming.

 

I am a big fan of the scooter and use them a lot when I am at conferences. They are a great way to get to and from your hotel or to lunch or dinner. You can check me out here:

 

 

According to the article, you will be able to download an app, unlock a pogo stick, and bounce your way around as an alternative to scooters. It will cost $1.00 to unlock and $.03 per mile measured in hoops.  

 

It Is Clear . . .

This is a complete fabrication even though the press release says, “With a lot of initial questions along the line of ‘is this for real?’, we feel the need to underline that Cangoroo is 100% real,” which, of course, is probably the second biggest giveaway that it is a “for fun” fake viral campaign.

Oh . . . and the company behind Cangoroo has a history of doing these kinds of things . . . that and that they reference an article about them in Forbes, which does not exist.

Yet they got it published . . .

 

Couldn’t We Do This?

It seems hard to imagine that any senior living company would ever try something like this since we are universally so risk averse. But imagine maybe something like this:

 

Assisted Living residents to be the first 80-year-olds to climb Everest.

 

Happy Acres senior living to establish the first ever underwater senior living community.

Senior Living community holds a mass wedding for 100 couples who are all over 90.

 

Bold Brave Fun

We are in a serious business where we do an amazing job of providing for residents in the final chapters, but it is possible to do serious and fun, serious and light-heartedness together.   

 

Let’s brainstorm your idea for doing a fun spoof story that would go viral. Post them in the comments below.