The Aqua Teen Hunger Force Fiasco.

No doubt by now, everybody has heard about the panic in Boston that was caused by a promotional stunt gone wrong. Turner Broadcasting hired marketing firm Interference, Inc. to promote an upcoming movie adaptation of one of their late night animated programs, Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The marketing firm chose to do this with a guerilla campaign; by placing blinking signs of one of the characters from the show flipping the bird all over major U.S. cities.




In Boston, some concerned citizens called the police, afraid the signs were actually bombs. This prompted a city-wide bomb scare which resulted in mass panic, 10 hour traffic jams and bridge closures. After it was discovered that this was nothing more than a viral marketing campaign, the people of Boston were understandably infuriated. Blame has been placed on Ted Turner and TBS, on Interference, Inc. and on the people who actually installed the signs.

The reaction to these signs in Boston was dramatic. In all the other cities, they were received quite benignly. For example, in San Francisco, here was the reaction of one man who was faced with a blinking Aqua Teen Hunger Force sign:

“One of the devices was found last week on a sign above a Clement Street art gallery and design store called Park Life. Store owner Jamie Alexander, 37, said the device was 12 inches wide and 15 inches tall, with a blinking, robotic figure displaying a middle finger. It had been attached with magnets.
“Alexander said he did not suspect a terrorist plot.
“"I thought, 'What the hell is this?' " Alexander said. "I left it up. I though it was cool."
“Alexander said he had seen the Cartoon Network show, but didn't make the connection.
“On Sunday, after the device ran out of battery power and stopped blinking, he had a friend climb a ladder and take it down.”

What is it about Bostonians that made them react so rashly? The signs were placed in several cities including New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle and San Francisco and yet there was no ensuing panic. Specifically, Boston's officials are invoking the September 11th attacks, which comes across as an attention getting ploy. Perhaps rather than shaking their fingers at TBS, they should investigate their own city's emergency response team who escalated a marketing gimmick and essentially a joke to drastic heights.

Turner has issued a formal apology, the text of which follows:

"We apologize to the citizens of Boston that part of a marketing campaign was mistaken for a public danger. We appreciate the gravity of this situation and, like any responsible company would, are putting all necessary resources toward understanding the facts surrounding it as quickly as possible. As soon as we realized that an element of the campaign was being mistaken for something potentially dangerous, appropriate law enforcement officials were notified and through Federal law enforcement channels, we identified the specific locations of the advertisements in all 10 cities in which they are posted. We also directed the third-party marketing firm who posted the advertisements to take them down immediately. We appreciate the commitment demonstrated by the Boston police department and other law enforcement agencies, as well as the Massachusetts Governor's Office, and deeply regret the hardships experienced as a result of this incident."




Turner will also be reimbursing the city of Boston for the expenses incurred as a result of this misinterpreted marketing campaign, which are currently estimated at $1M. Truly, though, TBS and Aqua Teen Hunger Force are the winners in this situation. Not only has this basic cable show now gotten worldwide exposure, they have made history. No doubt the viewership and merchandising for this show will skyrocket and I’m guessing the box office sales for the upcoming movie will be much greater than they would have been otherwise. Out of morbid curiosity, if nothing else, people will be interested to see what this show is all about. The amount of cash that will come out of TBS’s coffers to pay for this stunt will be significantly overshadowed by the profits that they will see as a result. Also, whenever there are national news events of this scope, viewership of CNN and hits to cnn.com go up. As TBS is also the parent company for CNN, the national exposure and immediacy of this news has, in a roundabout way, made even more money for TBS. Sometimes, there really is no such thing as bad publicity.


Interestingly, on television, the sign, a which is displaying a middle finger was censored. I for one, find it very funny that the scandal of the signs wasn't enough; that a picture that's essentially created with Lite-Brite technology is actually offensive enough to be pixellated. It's bad enough that people are overreacting and invoking a genuine national tragedy. To throw censorship into the whole affair takes it to a new level of absurdity.





http://news.awn.com/index.php?ltype=top&newsitem_no=18985
http://www.tv.com/story/8531.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/31/BAG2INSDPI4.DTL
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0201hoax-ON.html
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/31/boston.bombscare/index.html

(Sorry about the formatting, I've never used Blogger before.)