Holy freakin’ crap. In what looks to be a first for the nascent field of guerilla marketing, the man hired to execute a buzz campaign has been arrested as a terror suspect.
The Boston Globe (registration required) has the story:
The man who sent city and State Police rushing to defuse what they believed were explosive devices around the Boston region was arrested tonight.
Attorney General Martha Coakley scheduled a 9 p.m. press conference to announce the arrrest of Peter Berdovsky, an Arlington artist.
On his personal website, he posted pictures of a small group installing the figures — little square-shaped men frowning and making an obscene gesture — on the exterior wall of a hospital, on the awning of a Cambridge bar, at an Urban Outfitters, and a bridge.
Berdovsky was doing this on behalf of Interference Inc.. They’d better help this guy out–and they’re in deep shit anyway.
I’m sure we’ll hear more about this in the coming days, but if you’re about to pull some guerrilla marketing stunt, think carefully, or you might become a “brand ambassador” in the slammer.
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The boxes only show the animated character at night. Until then, they’re just black boxes with wires and tubes protruding from them. Which were placed under frigging subway tunnels and bridges, among other places.
The pitiful idiot who got arrested won’t go to jail. But the people who didn’t notify the city of their guerilla marketing plan should.
Who in their right mind approved this? Let alone thought it up? Didn’t somebody along the way see what a huge mistake it could become?
Boneheads.
The powerful should never be given the opportunity to overreact.
The humane, reasonable, mature, sensible reaction is to press for reimbursement, do a little finger wagging, etc. Instead we get righeous bellowing, inflated and alarmist rhetoric, and now arrests. It wouldn’t surprise me to see this incident become the casus belli for invading a country somewhere.
And I wonder who was it that said “no publicity is bad publicity”? But honestly, the quote that comes closest to my mind is “paranoia will destroy ya”.