The Downside Of Guerilla Marketing

VARIETY: Cartoon Network scares Boston
Electronic devices puts city on edge
By MICHAEL LEARMONTH
Posted: Wed., Jan. 31, 2007, 2:21pm PT

Oops.

A street marketing campaign in Boston intended to draw attention to Time Warner's Cartoon Network instead drew out the bomb squads, closing major arteries and bridges in and out of the city for much of the day.

Police responded to nine so-called "devices," shutting down Interstate 93, closing two bridges between Boston and Cambridge and halting boat traffic on the Charles River. Several other roads in and out of the city also were temporarily closed.

A third-party street-marketing firm, Interference Inc., had placed little black boards festooned with LED lights in the image of a character in the Aqua Teen Hunger Force series near roads, on bridge spans and in subway stations, in order to be noticed by commuters.

And they certainly were noticed, triggering a daylong terror scare in the city that was covered intensely by the cable news networks, including Cartoon Network's corporate cousin CNN.

At least one of the packages was so inscrutable to the responding authorities that it was detonated by a bomb squad, a scene captured from above by a news chopper on the scene.

Boston police said late Wednesday they had arrested and charged Peter Berdvosky, 27, who worked with the street marketing firm responsible for the campaign, with one count each of placing a hoax device and disorderly conduct for each of the devices found.

A local artist, Berdvosky called the pieces a "guerilla graffiti light installation," and his personal Web site has pictures and video of himself and a small group of others placing 22 devices around Boston.

Turner Broadcasting, a division of Time Warner and parent company of Cartoon Network, quickly apologized for the stunt and cooperated with authorities to locate the remaining "devices." In addition to Boston, the campaign is under way in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Ore., Austin, Texas, San Francisco and Philadelphia.

"We apologize to the citizens of Boston that part of a marketing campaign was mistaken for a public danger," said Turner Chairman and CEO Phil Kent. "As soon as we realized that an element of the campaign was being mistaken for something potentially dangerous, appropriate law enforcement officials were notified."

Kent added that Turner has provided authorities with the locations of the advertisements in the 10 cities that are part of the campaign, and ordered the Interference Inc. to take them down.

Gotham-based Interference Inc., which bills itself as "a nationwide guerrilla and alternative marketing agency from ideation through tactile implementation," did not return calls. Nor did CEO Sam Ewen.

The marketing campaign is part of a major push by Cartoon Network for the show, which was made into a feature film opening March 23.

But the devices scared commuters who mistook the LED lights and wires placed beneath bridge spans and in subway stations for explosives, and called the police.

The first device, which like the others looked like an oversized circuit board with wires hanging beneath, was found in a subway/bus station beneath Interstate 93, forcing the shutdown of the station and the highway.

Four more were reported around midday at the Boston U. Bridge and the Longfellow Bridge spanning the Charles River, on a Boston street corner and at Tufts-New England Medical Center. Later in the evening, another "device" was found near Fenway Park.

Local and federal authorities were not amused. "It's a hoax -- and it's not funny," Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said.

Unraveling the scare "was the major focus" for the Dept. of Homeland Security on Wednesday, according to spokesman Russ Knocke.

Federal officials alerted local authorities in other major cities across the country, he said, noting such efforts "take lots of time and man-hours and resources."

It's too soon to put a dollar figure on what local and federal efforts cost Wednesday, "but people have to be smart about what they're promoting and how they're promoting it," Knocke said.

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino said the city was prepared to take civil or criminal action against those responsible. "This is a heavy penalty, imprisonment, two to five years for each one of them," he said. "When it comes to public safety, we are throwing everything at them."

(William Triplett in Washington contributed to this report. )