Advertising campaigns either succeed wonderfully, fail horribly, or drift away like flatulence on a breezy autumn afternoon. Very rarely do they terrify gullible citizens and force major metropolitan cities to screech to a halt – if they did, Super Bowl Sunday would have ended in pandemonium, and Miami would have burned to the ground (no complaints here).
On Jan. 31, 2007, some innocuous advertising sent Boston into a tizzy. On that fateful day – henceforth known simply as 1-31-07, or the day of reckoning – portions of Boston briefly shut down; there were reports of “suspicious” boxes placed around the city. The police sprang into action without hesitation. Like Bruce Willis in “Die Hard: With a Vengeance,” Boston’s finest rushed through the city, defusing these rogue devices
Of course, these “mysterious” boxes were not bombs; they were cleverly positioned LED displays (a fancy name for an old-fashioned Lite Brite) that were advertising Cartoon Network’s Aqua Teen Hunger Force (the small boxes featured the light-bulbed image of a Mooninite). Aqua Teen Hunger Force is about random food items that fight crime. Or something. It’s complicated. You might have to be stoned or drunk, or preferably both. I love the show, which may say something about my general need for dissipation.
Two stoners under the employ of a marketing company sub-contracted by Turner Media (the parent company of The Cartoon Network), Sean Stevens (who looks like Tom Cruise) and Peter Berdovsky (who looks like a dreadlocked caveman), were eventually arrested. The press conference following their arrest was priceless. Standing before a panoply of microphones, Stevens and Berdovsky took questions from reporters as their lawyer looked on. Due to the ongoing nature of the investigation, and because the defendants had nothing pertinent to relay to the teeming mass of pencil-necked media whores, aside from the obligatory “no comment,” Stevens and Berdovsky decided to have some fun and told the reporters that they would only answer questions about hairstyles from the 1970s.
“That is not a question about hair! I’m sorry,” said Berdovsky, his dreadlocks dangling like majestic, hirsute badges of contempt. I usually feel antipathy toward people with dreadlocks; I’ve never understood why someone would purposefully make their hair resemble crusty dingleberries. But I guess I can’t speak; I sometimes wear my hair in a fucking faux hawk. Regardless, Berdovsky is my new hero.
Boston officials are now livid, blaming Turner media and its stoner grunt workers with perpetuating a “hoax” that cost the city approximately $750,000. Although Turner Media does not take blame for what transpired, they are willing to pay the city $750,000 for the cost of the city closure.
Frankly, I think this is going too far. Turner Media shouldn’t pay one cent. This wasn’t intended as a hoax (as the media calls it), nor was it intended to dredge up unkind memories of 9/11 (as law enforcement claim); this was guerilla marketing, plain and simple. Although guerilla marketing is often annoying, it can also be an entertaining and far more creative form of advertising than obnoxious television commercials or sex-saturated print ads.
To think, I used to think that Boston was a smart town. You know, they have Harvard and MIT, two of this country’s finest producers of smartenheimers. How woefully inadequate that reasoning is; any city that routinely supports Ted Kennedy cannot be entirely brilliant. I know that now.
According to CNN’s reportage, the Boston Police Commissioner called the marketing campaign “unconscionable.” These things simply cannot happen in this post 9/11 world. Yes, placing Lite Brites featuring a pixilated Mooninite extending his middle finger is truly the height of terror. If you’re a complete idiot. Or if you live in a constant state of fear because you believe that these mythical, swarthy, Madrassa-schooled madmen could strike at any moment. People don’t fear high cholesterol, they fear terrorists. But, honestly, which is more likely to kill you?
Boston police spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll called the incident “a colossal waste of money.” Indeed, but it’s the police department’s fault for misreading the situation. Boston officials were looking for their moment of Jack Bauer-inspired glory (there’s a wonderfully overdramatic image of the bomb squad blowing up one of these Lite Brites), but they ended up looking like fools. Let’s say, hypothetically, that these were bombs. They had been situated in Boston for close to a week. In that time, they would have exploded. Boston’s public figures can try to spin this event anyway they want – and spin they must, like coke-fueled Dervishes, as their obvious ineptitude forced the city to squander hundreds of thousands of dollars – but that doesn’t change the fact that they have created a controversy from whole cloth, and now they are trying to find scapegoats on which to blame the incident. This is all in the name of fighting terrorists, of course, which is utterly ridiculous.
This marketing campaign was not exclusive to Boston; nine other cities were targeted, and nine other cities calmly went along with their daily routines. It has become increasingly obvious that some people expect Americans to live in fear: politicians, crime-fighting agencies, and my very dear friends in the self-important field of journalism. We expect our government to protect us, to keep us safe from undue bodily harm. But there are moments, such as this, that illustrate the gross negligence of our elected officials.
It is a sad indictment on how far we’ve fallen that all it takes to bring a city to its heels are several conspicuously placed children’s toys intended for marketing. It’s almost as if politicians and the media expect us to cower in fear, to forfeit our basic right to find amusement in the folly of their ham-fisted stupidity. Well, maybe it is time these people received a pride-obliterating bitch-slap, courtesy of the moon.
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