Running Interference
By Cicero | Related entries in NewsI live in Boston’s backyard. I’ve been hearing the buzz and fuss about the ‘Aqua Teen Hunger Force’ guerrilla marketing campaign snafu:
The US city of Boston was snarled in traffic jams January 31st as police investigated hoax boaxes with flashing lights placed around bridges all over the city.
Turner Broadcasting Systems had hired people to plant the strange devices around the city of Boston to market a television cartoon called “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” which has a movie coming out February 23rd.Road and rail traffic was disrupted by the Police as they investigated the hoax and removed the boxes within emergency protocols for bomb scares. Two men alleged to have placed the boxes have been charged, and Turner Broadcast Systems apologized. Boston’s mayor will pursue compensation to the city for the cost of the scare.
The media circus seems to have oscillated around this event. Most people think Bostonians have overreacted. I agree.
If this were just the work of renegade guerilla artists, it would be one thing. But this isn’t quite that.
Guerrilla tactics are flourishing in the hyper-networked age. We see the guerrilla meme changing the nature of war, marketing and advertising — even childhood. We see it in art, as a form of expression.
The magnetic lighted boards planted in Boston by Berdovsky and Stevens were a kind of guerilla art that is ultimately funded by a large entertainment conglomerate — Turner Broadcasting. It was apparently the brainchild of Interference Marketing, Inc., engaged by Turner to promote ‘Aqua Teen Hunger Force.’ In the end, it was all part of a promotion created to enrich a mega-corporation that is shrewd enough to hijack the emerging guerrilla cultural meme.
A friend of mine said that this is a pathology of the wartime mentality we have assumed over five years. Indeed, these are jittery times. In some ways, there’s a similarity between this event and the overreaction to Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast in 1938. It was the eve of another war then. People had lost their sense of humor. Who can fault them, under the circumstances?
The two men arrested for planting the devices later gave a surreal press interview for television. They made a mockery of the situation, which on some level couldn’t be denied as being ridiculous. I wanted to like them and appreciate their Dada moment.
But I didn’t. What troubles me is that I can’t determine if Berdovsky and Stevens are renegade Dadaist artists, brilliant marketing tacticians, hapless idiots or corporate stooges.
People wag their fingers at an overreactive, jittery populace as being the villain in this situation. But really, it’s hard to tell who the villain is. People living in a paranoid age acting irrationally? The pathologies created by the war on terror? Artists? Marketing? Corporate media? The guerilla mentality?
The whole bloody circus?
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February 1st, 2007 at 11:47 pm
They’re all three, and that’s just how it is.
Ultimately, the people who overreacted were the city leaders. Public citizens see certain things and they should report what they want to. In 2002, my sister lived next to some Muslims who were often loud in the middle of the night and got freaked out. She called the FBI and reported them. What happened? Nothing. They were just loud.
Long story short, it’s ultimately up to the leaders to determine what’s going on and act appropriately. They didn’t in this case. The blame is on them not the genuises, shills, buffoons.
Done and done.
February 2nd, 2007 at 2:19 am
I hear Al qaeda and Iran have finally developed Lite-Brite…it took them long enough. Boston is doomed.
February 2nd, 2007 at 11:35 am
I’m sure Tzara is looking up from hell, or down from heaven, just loving the end-product — Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Where once Dada was a statement against the absurdity of the massive loss of human life in WWI, it is now reduced to…well…marketing for a stoner’s cartoon. Yes, brilliance.
I love the fact by the way that the only one’s with the responsibility to “act appropriately” are the “leaders.” Where once we had civic leaders, now we have zoo keepers.
February 2nd, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Sorry, guys. The devices were secretly & illegally placed. Since these were obviously electronic devices of an unknown nature or source placed where they were, believing they may have been explosive devices was a reasonable precaution. The cops did exactly what they were supposed to do, & they did it well.
The political leaders, on the other hand, have over reacted & arrested the wrong people for the wrong reasons. It is painfully clear that NOBODY planned this as a terrorist hoax. To charge anyone involved of such a crime is a crime in itself. These 2 men are guilty only of doing their jobs. Their bosses were responsible to insure what they did was legal. Why have they not been charged for the crimes they committed - namely, placing ads on public buildings & bridges w/o permission? If Ted Turner knew of it in advance, he should have been the first one handed a subpoena for criminal charges & civil damages.
It is illegal to post anything on public property without permission. These actions have caused the people of Boston a lot of grief. They deserve just compensation from the actual perps, not their employees. Nobody involved deserves to be charged for creating a terrorist hoax. Get a grip, Boston.
February 2nd, 2007 at 4:39 pm
I’ll cast one Yea vote for bob in fl. who pretty much nailed it. But don’t think it’s over; the latest I heard is ‘follow the money’ for the pending law suit.
February 3rd, 2007 at 6:20 pm
On the question of whether Boston authorities over-reacted:
The normal reaction of bureaucracy to anything is over-reaction; that being the best way to minimize recrimination and lawsuits. This is why schools go into Drug Alert Lockdowns when a student brings a packet of Maalox to school. That’s over-reaction. We have a society full of “zero-tolerance policies” which are designed to take all rational discretion away and force people to over-react.
It has nothing to do with any “climate of fear”, which does not exist outside of the intellectual fever swamps. It is normal operating procedure for a nation full of lawyers and finger-pointers.
Back to Boston: a professional bomb squad investigated the first device and were unable to determine its nature, so they destroyed it. If anybody thinks the bomb squad is stupid, you try telling the difference between a harmless object and a lethal device when the price of being wrong is your life.
Now that we know it was a harmless display of juvenile stupidity and not a terrorist attack, is Boston over-reacting by filing charges? Ask the cops who were deployed (at great civic expense) and had to crawl up to those f–king things wondering if they would blow up and kill them.
February 6th, 2007 at 9:51 am
As soon as someone called in the first “suspicious device� the response was almost certainly predetermined. Why? Procedure. My guess: An MBTA security office gets a call about a suspicious device that appeared at a very busy T-stop. They sent out investigators and just to be sure, they send out a notice to the T, Police, and Fire with a description of the device. Suddenly they get calls in about another device, then another, then another. Based on the public transportation bombings in Europe over the past two years, what were they supposed to do? I’m sure that once the emergency response procedure was initiated, everything else about the response was predetermined.
You can argue about and laugh at the response to a cartoon add, but you have to remember what makes guerrilla advertising work. It counts on a select group of people who are already knowledgeable of what’s being advertised seeing it, talking about it amongst themselves, creating a buzz, and eventually the work leaking out to others. Most of all, it depends on most people not knowing what it is at all, and asking about it which can then be answered by people “in the know.â€Â? TBS and their add company can spin it as harmless adds, as they turned out to be. But it’s disingenuous to spin them as something that should have been obvious to the police or fire department. It’s not like they said “TBSâ€Â? and had a 1-800-number on them. They were intended to not look like an obvious advertisement. That’s what makes them “cool” because not just anyone can know what they are just by seeing them.
And it’s also silly for these two guys to be charged with anything more than some sort of defacement or vandalizing charge. Every second they get in front of a camera validates TBS’s actions by increasing the return from their advertising investment.
If Boston really has an issue with these guys, they should stand behind their actions, and pass some laws about advertising in the city that either prevent this from happening again, or gives them more and better teeth to go after the companies responsible the next time.