The latest industry overcome by celebrity endorsement deals is audio equipment. Headphones appear to be the new sneakers–when the $300 Beats by Dre model debuted a couple of years ago, they were the earwear equivalent of Nike Air Jordans. The first question to ask someone wearing Beats by Dre was either “When’s your album coming out?” or “How can I get tickets to the release party?”

Once marketers realized how profitable this racket can be, everyone and his brother (and his brother’s nephew, who appeared on one episode of some reality show) jumped aboard the C-list headphone train. Are they better than iPod earbuds? Do they offer deeper bass and crisper high-end sounds for compressed, low-quality mp3s? Sure–but this is more than a little ridiculous.

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In fact, an even dumber stunt went down in Los Angeles this morning. It inspired more than frustration and Internet mockery—it actually led to a bomb scare and the two-and-a-half hour evacuation of a radio station in downtown LA. What started it? A beeping package delivered to the lobby of LA’s KNX 1070 at the beginning of the work day.

The offending objects turned out to be a pair of beeping promo clocks sent by BET to promote some kind of upcoming Nick Cannon special that we can only hope will have nothing to do with “America’s Got Talent.” Unfortunately, they led the station to suspend service and required all employees who worked in the building to stand outside for more than two hours.

We’re not quite sure what BET’s PR planners were going for with these clocks, but we would recommend that all PR pros avoid pulling this stunt in the future. At least make sure the clocks don’t start beeping until after they’re outside the box, OK?

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