Lessons

The unexpected can be your best friend

Sometimes, what actually happens is far better than what you had hoped for. 

When the US Chamber of Commerce's head of PR was tipped off by an errant reporter and tried to shut down our press conference, we ended up with wall-to-wall news coverage we wouldn't have otherwise gotten.

When an oil-conference organizer unexpectedly tried to shut dow our demo demo of Exxon's future human-made fuel, the resulting chaos became one of the funniest moments in our second movie.

Sometimes, of course, the unexpected feels terrible—like when no one reacted to our proposal to auction off US democracy. But even in those cases, things can turn out all right, if you tell a good story.

Instances in which we learned this lesson

Perhaps our most international project - and most edge-of-seat
Blame Canada?
How a fake website ended up threatening a scary candidate
In 1999, while working on RTMark.com, Mike and Andy receive an email from a fellow named Zack Exley, who has had the foresight to register the domain…
How we scuttled Chevron's campaign
One leak, and over a 48-hour period we scuttled Chevron's campaign... and then many friends scuttled it a lot more. It remains scuttled today.
How we showed up the absurdity of the COP26's "net zero" nonsense
On Monday, Nov. 8, the Yes Men sent out a fake press release on behalf of private-jet outfitter Yasava with some very real news about this utterly,…
How we invented a conservative talking point, fooling Newsmax twice in a row
Through some Yes Men sleight of hand, we ended up as Newsmax's contact for the American Enterprise Institute. And when they wanted to talk about the…
How we helped the US Chamber become its own worst enemy
Shortly after launching a battalion of Survivaballs to draw attention to the climate crisis in advance of the COP15 (that we had some fun at as well…
How the public destroyed Shell's 2012 ad campaign
In 2012, as part of helping Shell to (mis)launch their Arctic drill rig, we decided to "help" Shell with their "Let's Go" ad campaign too.  First,…
The story behind the story of the Yes Men's first project
Off we went to Salzburg, Austria—to speak as reps of the WTO. What we'd encounter would change our lives forever.
The story behind the story of Exxon's solution to climate change
The strange, meandering path that led to setting poor Reggie on fire as a step towards saving humanity.
See more "lessons learned"