It's hard to say definitively that something is the most bizarre alternative media stunt in history.

But a recent stunt in Sweden would undoubtedly be a finalist for that honor.

Pause, a home entertainment store in Stockholm, wanted to convey to potential customers what it considers its biggest strength, the custom installation of sound systems.  

And so Pause, with the help of its agency, Åkestam Holst, decided to do the most difficult installation it could think of.

It installed a stereo in a man's stomach, turning him into a human jukebox.

It sounds like a joke. It's not. The company really designed a way for the human body to play music.

Fredrik Hjelmquist, the CEO of the company, swallowed a small device dubbed a gutpod, a speaker housed in a pill-shaped container shorter than your pinkie finger yet powerful enough that the sound emitted from the speakers could still be heard outside Hjelmquist's body.

So that no one thought the human jukebox was a hoax, Pause invited journalists to witness Hjelmquist late last year as he stuck the gutpod in his mouth and washed it down with a large glass of water.

Hjelmquist traveled to some Pause stores, too, where microphones were placed in front of his belly, and the songs that came out played in speakers across the stores as customers gathered around him and gawked.

The agency released video of such a gathering on YouTube.

The gutpod had a wireless receiver that allowed it to be programmed from afar. Åkestam Holst set up a site where people could go to request different songs to play on the Human Jukebox.

As you'd expect, the story of the Human Jukebox generated a huge amount of media coverage, both in Sweden and in blogs and newspapers around the world, which was exactly what Pause, which has a small media budget, was hoping for.

The stunt worked because it was so completely and utterly over the top.

You naturally want to see how the jukebox works upon hearing about it, and you also want to know whether the whole thing is a hoax, which is just the sort of alternative media buzz that gets results.

This one certainly did.

Sales soared by 112 percent at Pause stores in just the first six days after Hjelmquist swallowed the gutpod, and store visits soared 400 percent. Visits to Pause's web site jumped more than 600 percent.

As for how Hjelmquist got the gutpod out of his gut, well, that's best left to the imagination. Suffice to say he digested several gut-focused medicines that helped him do the job.