Or maybe you’re not gay and have no interest spending the holidays in NYC.

Either way, Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air have come up with a PR stunt for those traveling to New York this holiday season.

Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air have announced a new program that will charge heterosexuals 10 percent extra for their air travel to specific locations during the Christmas season.

The company actually offers the 10 percent as a discount but only if the purchaser obtains the ticket through a “gay” page of the company’s website, a location not typically patronized by families seeking travel arrangement.

Better get your tickets fast. I’m guessing this offer is going to cause some unwanted publicity and be pulled.

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Evian Natural Spring Water has just announced its very first venture into the virtual world.

“Partnering with the popular virtual world Second Life, characters…that choose to drink Evian are awarded with a more lively, more inviting complexion. This virtual transformation, while not possible in real life, provides more than just simply a cosmetic change, but indicates skin renewal.”

A note to the individual who wrote and the Evian rep who signed off on the release, thanks for reminding us readers of the difference between reality and fantasy. We get confused.

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Interested in helping your company or client interact with the nation’s premier business and tech journalists and an influential audience of business development executives and investors? Apply today to launch a new technology at DEMO 08, taking place Jan. 28-30 in Palm Desert, Calif.

The DEMO conferences are launchpad events for tomorrow’s cutting-edge technologies, catapulting exceptional products to national and international fame. (Palm, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Danger, Skype and TiVo are a few past demonstrators.) Whether you want media attention, VC money, or Fortune 500 customers, DEMO can help you make the connections your new product needs to succeed.

To qualify for DEMO, a product must:
· make its public debut at the DEMO conference;
· make a significant contribution to the state of the art in its target market;
· change the dynamics of the marketplace into which it is introduced; and
· be backed by a management team capable of delivering the product to market.

To learn more about launching at DEMO, and to find the online application form, visit http://www.demo.com/launch.php. The deadline for applications is Nov. 9.

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Did we go too far or was it sheer brilliance?

By now you’re all familiar with Chris Anderson’s, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, email list of blackballed PR firms.

A quick glance over the list reveals email addresses from Edelman, 5W PR, Fleishman-Hillard, Ogilvy, Lippe Taylor, Morris+King, SS PR, Weber Shandwick, and dozens more.

Well being the aggressive PR firm that we are, BlinnPR’s business development team emailed some of the clients represented by these PR firms. We let their clients know in no uncertain terms that they’ve been blackballed by Wired and who knows how many other unnamed publications.

Oh and by the way, BlinnPR is not on the list and our clients enjoy unfettered access to Wired and a host of other publications because of our no-nonsense, get the job done without annoying reporters approach.

Needless to say, two PR firms didn’t appreciate our aggressiveness. One going so far as to try and entice our clients and employees to leave by promising greener pastures. BTW, it has been 10 days and still none of our clients or employees has left.

Maybe it’s me, but why would our clients and employees leave in the first place. For a PR firm who has been blackballed by Wired and can’t say for sure what other publications are trashing their emails? But that is a discussion for another day.

Anyway, some people thought it was a brilliant move on our part while others felt otherwise.

Personally, I’m not apologizing for what we did. A day doesn’t go by when our clients are not being courted by other agencies. If you think it doesn’t happen you have your head in the sand. As I see it the differences is in the approach.

Fact is, BlinnPR aggressively goes after new business and represents our clients with the same fervor.

I would like to hear your thoughts. What do you think? Did we go too far or was it sheer brilliance.

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