The lines outside Apple Stores across the globe will be long later this year when the much-anticipated iPhone 7 goes on sale, a guaranteed media spectacle ripe with companies seeking inexpensive advertising of their products.

No guerrilla marketing stunt set the bar higher than one in Sydney last fall, when a telepresence robot with the cheerful face of a woman named Lucy framed in an iPad took her place in line to buy an iPhone 6s.

Greg Packer is a shirtless footnote in the history of the iPhone. The retired highway maintenance worker from Long Island made a name for himself as the first person to line up for the sale of the first iPhone in 2007.

During his nearly weeklong stint sitting outside the Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York City, scores of reporters came by to interview him as he sat in a lawn chair, at times not bothering to put on a shirt during his many closeups.