Marketing Firm's Mailing Of Gag Grenades Bombs / Lawyers' consultants fired after scares

2000-09-21 04:00:00 PDT SOUTH BAY -- Whoa, are those real grenades in the mail, counselor?

A promotional gag aimed at creating a booming business for a Los Angeles law firm instead blew up in its designers' faces earlier this week -- and the Santa Clara County bomb squad is not amused.

A marketing firm hired -- and since fired -- by the business law firm Quinn Emanuel came up with the plan to send out paperweights shaped like hand grenades to hip Silicon Valley businesses.

Each grenade had the law firm's name attached jauntily to its pin.

Between 500 and 600 of the grenades were shipped out by priority mail on Friday, said Steve Madison, a senior partner with the 105-attorney firm, which has offices in Los Angeles and Palo Alto. Almost all were aimed at the south Bay Area, he said.

"Our marketing consultant told us this is Silicon Valley, they're youthful, kind of aggressive, edgy, this is an effective promotion to do," Madison said. He declined to name the consultant.

"It sounded a lot different than it turned out to be," Madison said. "When somebody tells you 'plastic grenade,' you think of something that floats in your kid's bathtub. I saw this thing for the first time yesterday afternoon, and it looks pretty realistic."

That assessment was shared by an employee at a Zanker Road business who opened one of the packages Sept. 18, San Jose police said. An employee at Smart Station recycling in Sunnyvale who found a discarded faux grenade among the bottles and cans also thought it looked pretty real, said Sunnyvale Police Capt. Chuck Eaneff.

Both of those discoveries led to interventions by the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office Bomb Squad, who were able to tell the fake grenades from the real thing.

"The Smart Station here did exactly the right thing . . . and our officers did the right thing too. Any doubt at all, call the bomb squad and let the experts decide," Eaneff said. "The moral of this story is that legal and marketing need to work closely together."

The package found in San Jose ended up with inspectors for the United States Postal Service. Inspector Linda Joe said this isn't the first time mailed promotional devices have scared postal customers - a baseball that played "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" once made a recipient very nervous, she said.

The Quinn Emanuel promotion was something else, Joe said. But as much as she felt the mailing violated common sense, it may be hard to prove it violated any laws, she said, because it can't be proved that the law firm or its marketing consultant intended any harm.

"There are laws relating to mailing hoax devices, but getting intent is part of that. The U.S. attorney's office is kind of looking into this to see if there is anything that would apply in this situation," she said. "But of course the damage was done."

Quinn Emanuel now is working on damage control.

Although the promotion was cleared with postal officials in advance, Madison said, in hindsight it was not appropriate.

Madison said the firm has offered to pay for the bomb squad's time, and by yesterday afternoon contacted all of the promotion's recipients and offered to send couriers to round up the fake grenades. They won't get them all.

"Some of the people really liked them and refused to give them back," Madison said.