Straight Shooting
How a little gun store did big business without selling a single gun
On March 11, a gun shop opened on the Lower East Side of Manhattan with a peculiar sales goal: to not sell a single gun. In fact, the store’s true intention was to make first-time gun buyers think twice before purchasing a weapon, dispelling the myths that owning a gun would make themselves and their families safer — because statistically speaking, the evidence is overwhelming in the other direction.
To do this, we designed an authentic looking gun store down to the smallest detail and loaded it with the same guns used in a variety of tragic shootings. Then, when an unsuspecting first-time gun buyer asked to see a gun, the store owner — who was an actor — proceeded with a sobering sales pitch.
He described how that very gun being held by the customer was also purchased by another customer, once upon a time, with the best of intentions, before things went horrifically wrong — a two-year-old accidentally shooting her mother, a five-year-old killing his nine-month-old sibling, and so on.
The idea was born nearly six months prior in September of 2014. But to pull it off was incredibly difficult due to the number of legal and logistical roadblocks. In fact, it may have set a record in terms of how many times we heard “no” and the project almost died. First, gun stores are illegal in New York City. In fact, even fake guns are illegal in New York. Fortunately, we had a brave client, an incredible account team, strong producers, stellar activation, and relentless creatives who all worked tirelessly together, squeezing out just one more “yes” than the number of nos.
After filming the events that unfolded at the store on March 11 and 12, we released a powerful online video the following week, while our amazing PR team carefully orchestrated a roll out through the media that would take the world by storm. We gained airtime and front-page coverage on everything from the Washington Post, the Daily Mail, and Fast Company to NY1, CNN, and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. Even Fox News jumped on board, albeit with a slightly different point of view on the matter. We also hit social hard with nearly nine million views on Facebook alone. Influencers like Jim Carrey retweeted it to his 14 million followers. It was on Upworthy, Reddit, and the Huffington Post.
Before we knew it, we had over 12 million online views and 750 million global media impressions in the first week, all without spending a single dollar on media — and all without selling a single gun. Not bad for a store that was only open for two days.
