DIARY

September, 2002

An idea for a PR stunt

Pieter wanted to use three elements. The fact that Pieter is Dutch, a concept based on honest stealing and an out of the ordinary campaign based on a stunt. These three elements should give a PR campaign a unique appeal. Pieter had several ideas. The most promising was the file-sharing business. He stumbled upon the file-sharing angle during a search on the Internet looking for information on “stealing” and the “Netherlands.” In a September 2002 Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article with the title “Sex, drugs and now file-sharing?” it was indicated that the Netherlands is now the only country in the world where there is a positive court ruling for file-sharing providers. The initial thought was that Pieter would be a spokesperson for the file-sharing business. After giving this some more thought Pieter developed the idea of setting up a make-believe file-sharing business in the Netherlands. He thought that this would attract much more attention from the press. In the WSJ article it was indicated that this court ruling would encourage file-sharing services to come to the Netherlands. Since it was more or less predicted that this would happen, why not actually set this up (but not for real). It made sense to use this angle. Also, the title of our book The Honest Thief was perfect for a file-sharing service company. It would have to be a make-believe business. It was clear that the strategy was not an easy one. There were a lot of things to consider and we had to make sure it looked 100% real. One thing was for sure, it would be risky.