Here's a great way to get some publicity these days: Throw a shoplifting promo into the mix; that'll get people into your store.
No joke, this happened last month at Distance, a running store in Paris, where they hired Méba Mickael Zeze, one of France's fastest sprinters who once ran the 100-meter dash in ten seconds, to be a security guard for a day. Merchandise marked with the tag "Rob it to get it" was fair game to anyone who could successfully outrun Mr. Zeze, and it sounds like a few peeps actually got away.
Some customers thought the managers were joking, but they still took the chance. Most did not recognize Zeze — who has run the 100-meter dash in 9.99 seconds and the 200-meter dash in 19.97 seconds — or know he was a professional sprinter. Zeze wore a black polo and a band on his left arm that said "SECURITY."
Zeze easily caught the first runner, who grabbed a pair of black shoes around 11:30 a.m. and ran away on a busy sidewalk. Zeze said he sprinted at about 35 percent of his maximum speed to catch most customers. As he kept succeeding, though, other shoppers tried to trick him.
On a few occasions, one person talked to Zeze while their friend seized an item and ran away. Other people waited for Zeze to chase someone else, so when he was occupied, they could make their move. But Zeze chased down most people anyway.
As you may have guessed, they didn't advertise this at all beforehand, since the store would've been bonkers busy. They simply put the sign up at the beginning of the day.
Here's a video Distance put up on YouTube:
Yeah, Zeze caught 74 of 76 shoplifters, wrangling in an impressive 97% of them. Not a bad day on the job if you're a sprintaholic security guard. Zeze did say, however, that this was one of his tougher training sessions on record. By 1 p.m., (the store opened at 11) Zeze was starting to get tired already, but the store continued to fill with customers. By the time the shift was over, at 7 p.m., Zeze was pooped. He apparently had to get up the next day for Olympic qualifiers as well, which couldn't have been easy on his legs.
At the end of the day, after only giving away two items to customers, Zeze simply said it had been a "long, long, long day." I just hope he still qualified for the Olympics. Either way, genius marketing by Distance.
My American perspective because nobody asked: It's a good thing they don't have a store in Chicago, because if they tried this there I don't think it would've gone over how they wanted it to go over. Zeze's bottom would be dead.
And that's all I got to say about that.
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