Surely you’ve asked yourself when seeing a flashy public marriage proposal, “what would happen if the person being asked said ‘no?'” The marketing peeps over at baseball’s minor-league New Britain Rock Cats wondered the same thing. So they staged a fake proposal during a fan trivia contest to find out how the crowd would react…and to get the video shared far and wide.

It worked. The video on YouTube has more than 600,000 views and was featured on ESPN and many blogs. However, the whole thing was a hoax perpetrated as a publicity stunt for the team.

“We worked with two of our staff on the skit and executed a digital strategy to set the video on a viral path,” the team’s VP for Marketing said in a statement the team put out today. “We could not be more pleased with the outcome.” Yes, a lot of people are saying the name “Rock Cats” now, and not in the context of “What the heck is a rock cat?” Is staging a fake proposal really the best way to get attention, though?

ROCK CATS FAILED MARRIAGE PROPOSAL REVEALED TO BE PROMOTION [Press Release] (via OTE)

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