Dell Streak internal marketing stunt scares employees, gets unwanted SWAT team attention
Some may say they'd do just about anything for their Dell Streak or Streak 7, but I'm pretty sure even the most die-hard fans would draw the line way before doing something that could get them arrested.
Two Dell employees, on the other hand, orchestrated an ill-conceived "secretive internal marketing campaign" today to celebrate the release of the "new Dell Streak tablet [that] can interface with Harley-Davidson motorcycles" and ended up in police custody. Dressed in dark clothes, wearing a mask, and wielding what 911 callers thought were weapons, one of the men involved in the stunt made his through Dell's buildings in Round Rock ordering people to go to the lobby.
Obviously, a masked man with weapons (they were really just "two metallic objects") barging into an office building and yelling at everyone caused employees to call 911 and press panic alarms in secured areas, which in turn led local law enforcement to storm the Dell campus.
When they arrived, one of the men refused to comply with the officers, raising the intensity level of the situation. Eleven minutes later, however, the "attack" was determined to be a marketing plan that nobody knew about. The two men were arrested and charged with misdemeanors.
According to a spokesperson for the Round Rock police, the purpose of the stunt-gone-wrong was just supposed to be "go to the lobby because we're introducing a new item." A "source inside Dell" identified this item as the "new Dell Streak tablet" and the local news showed the Streak 7 integrated into the Harley video we all saw last week, but I personally think it was either the Streak 10 or something else entirely.
It doesn't make any sense for something like this to be done for the Streak 7 when it was released two weeks ago. Unless everyone in Round Rock has really been under a rock, the Streak 7 is not "a new item" to them.
[KXAN via GottaBeMobile]
