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The Idiot Box
When 'Hip' Ads Clash With Squares
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DREADFUL MARKETERS Berdovsky, Stevens
Sure Peter "Zebbler" Berdovsky and Sean Stevens of guerrilla marketing team Interference, Inc. are pleading not guilty to charges that they created a panic in Boston on Wednesday for their ads for the Adult Swim's Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Yeah, they could face years in prison after a March 7 hearing. And, yes, the city of Boston is demanding that Turner Broadcasting, the owners of the Cartoon Network, reimburse them for the expense of shutting down major thoroughfares and calling in the bomb squad.

That still doesn't mean this wasn't one hell of a guerrilla marketing scheme—or that the guerrillas involved regret their actions. The two are laughing off suggestions that their Lite Brite-esque "Mooninites," were intended to create a city-wide emergency lockdown.

As it turns out, the LED ad gaffe might just make Adult Swim's campaign one of the most successful ever, garnering wall-to-wall coverage in the last the 24-hour news cycle. Such attention is, after all, a powerful tool.

When Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez waved a copy of Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival at the U.N. last year, the lefty tome instantly climbed best-seller lists, proving that unexpected forms of promotion can move serious product.

A decade ago, ad team Kirshenbaum and Bond wrote the book on the subject, Under the Radar, cataloguing campaigns like the sidewalk stencils they did for a lingerie company suggesting that passing skirt-wearers might need to splurge on some new underwear. The ladies may have sprung for new panties, but some guerrilla campaigns haven't quite hit the mark.

Sony's graffiti ads for its newest PSP device, purportedly targeted at hip, urban-dwelling youths who are into street art and down with the latest in technology, had the unintended consequence of pissing off those very street artists, who saw through the corporate numbskullery.

In 2005, Snapple tried to erect the world's largest popsicle in Union Square to disastrous effects. Unseasonably high temperatures melted the strawberry kiwi confection, forcing firefighters to close down several streets in their quest to hose the sugary liquids off the streets.

The folks behind Got Milk! contracted marketing company CBS Outdoor to affix cookie scented strips to bus shelters across San Francisco last year, only to be forced to remove them when residents complained that the subliminal scents might provoke allergic reactions and hunger pangs among the city's homeless.

As the streets and bus stops become choked with ads, some people are taking the guerilla advertising into their own hands, or their bodies. The company TatAd.com invites would-be human billboards to brand themselves, literally, with ad campaigns. The upside? Residuals for life.

If selling your own dignity's not enough, you could always do what one mercenary couple did and put the naming rights for your baby up on eBay.

By Sarah Horne   02/01/07 4:45 PM
Related: Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Media, The Idiot Box
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