C.C. Chapman writes about today’s craziness in Boston caused by an advertising campaign gone wrong. Reading the news out of the Boston Globe, it sounds like a pretty crazy day there. More news here. And it’s not just Boston… these packages are in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Austin, San Francisco and Philadelphia. You can almost see someone thinking about it… “why don’t we place these signs around cities and encourage people to go out and find them?”
But… duh!… in this day and age, to go and plant things under bridges? and other similar locations? What in the world were they thinking? Very unbelievable?
On the other hand, Turner Broadcasting has now received more attention that they could ever have imagined for this cartoon series. I imagine someone’s head will roll at Turner… but I also have to wonder how many people will at least know of the series name by now.
Crazy stuff…
That’s the sad part about it is that the stunt worked for them. The pictures of the “device” and the name of the show will be everywhere on the news. Some flack for them but it’ll blow over.
The amount of resources, tax dollars and hours wasted today is what bothers me. You DON’T do stuff like this in today’s day and age.
So the next question is – will the State of Massachusetts and/or the City of Boston sue Turner Broadcasting for the amount of $$$ that today’s debacle cost? Or for that matter will other companies sue Turner for the lost productivity caused by their people stuck in traffic?
You can almost sense the lawyers circling like sharks when some blood is dropped in the water…
People suing because they got caught in traffic? Sorry, I think you have to chalk that up to being an assumed risk of driving. The only thing wrong with this campaign is that this particular city suffers an unwarranted siege mentality.
Nine other cities had these devices scattered around. Not one considered it a terrorist threat. How is Turner Broadcast or poor Peter Berdvosky responsible for Boston’s panic? If I get scared by a Humvee driving down the street, do I get to sue the manufacturer? If Boston’s hyperactive security forces make me unwilling to visit the city, do the airlines and hotels get to sue the city for a loss of tourism dollars? Why is the press so uncritical of this absurd overreaction?