The day the Hub of the Universe stood still
Adam at Universal Hub kept an eye on how Boston was held captive by a guerilla marketing campaign for an animated television show.
People are mostly pissed at Turner Broadcasting, the company behind the advertising campaign that set off the bomb scare.
Here’s a summary of the bomb scare and the problems it caused across the city.
The Boston Fire Department was removing some bomb-scare related object from the Charlesgate overpass this evening, but my camera was out of juice, so no pictures here.
Update: Oh, wow, welcome to Puritan City: Artist arrested for planting marketing figures.
The man who sent city and State Police rushing to defuse what they believed were explosive devices around the Boston region was arrested tonight.
I wonder on what charge he was arrested?
…charged with placing a hoax device (Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 266, Section 102A½), and disorderly conduct.
Doesn’t sound like something that will stick, but it ought to put a healthy scare in guerilla marketers.
I recommend authors of guerilla-marketing books add this little episode as a cautionary example.
Fox25 WFXT-TV calls the whole thing a “hoax.” That strikes me as inaccurate. A scare, yes, but a hoax, no. As far as we know nobody intended for anybody to believe that the the devices were bombs. The end of Belgium is an example of a hoax. A hoax that will hopefully come true one day. [Thursday morning update: The Boston Herald's headline writer also calls it hoax, but the article it refers to doesn't, other than in context of the specific charge against that refugee from Belorussia who was arrested last night. Another headline in today's Herald refers to "black teen death rate," but the article itself doesn't mention any rates, only numbers. Headline writers gone wild!
More hoax haters: misanthropica, cosinezero.]
I must say, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if we find out tomorrow that the marketing agency in fact had been permitted to put all those weird devices where they did. [Thursday morning update: I guess they didn't:
Turner executives said they did not forewarn local authorities, because they never imagined the campaign would cause alarm. "It was not our intent to do anything but get attention for a television series, period," Phil Kent, chairman and chief executive of Turner, said in an interview last evening.
]
Here’s an interview from 2001 with the CEO of Interference Inc., the company that executed the ad campaign:
Q: Guerilla marketing has that obtrusive element that can hurt a campaign too. What’s the trick to make sure it’s appealing and not annoying?
If you put the effort into the campaign, it isn’t obtrusive at all. Of course, there is good and bad marketing. The goal is not just to be there but to be there at the right time and in the right place.
…
Q: What’s the single most exciting campaign you were involved in?
Heh.
Jesse Noyes notes on Boston Herald’s blog The Messenger that several ad agencies called him to let him know that they had nothing to do with the ad campaign. Quite funny.
Choose your crime wisely. Former Herald scribe Michael Gee assesses the situation:
There is no crime more vigorously prosecuted by the state than making public officials look like moronic horses’ asses.
But then he repeatedly refers to the incident as a hoax.
Thursday evening editorial:
I don’t think the moronic “starving artists” douchebags from Arlington deserve jail, but gee, isn’t it funny to watch this supposed political refugee from Belarus treat the legal process in the United States with such flippancy? Did he flee Belarus because the laws in that country don’t properly protect his “I’m-a-homeless-bum” haircut? Was he equally flippant when facing U.S. immigration officials and judges? And his fawning fans in Somerville and other exurbs are misguided. Their position seems to be that it’s terrible that we live in this era of fear and paranoia where civil liberties are threatened, but it’s OMG totally cool to treat the court as joke. The court is there to protect citizens - and other residents - from the petty and vengeful anger of the Mayor and other big shots. The proceedings should be treated with respect, both inside and outside the courthouse.
Now, what’s so commendable about taking money from The Man to deface the city?
Thursday night thought
I wonder what idiot op-ed writer the Globe will use tomorrow to tell us how we really should feel about and react to the bomb-scare and its aftermath. Whoever they use, I’m sure the op-ed is going to be tremendously stupid.
