“The campaign becomes the story”

Boston temporarily closed parts of bridges, subway stations, an Interstate highway and even part of the Charles River on Wednesday after the authorities found what the police described as suspicious devices at nine places.

But the devices, which included circuit boards, turned out to be part of a marketing campaign by Turner Broadcasting to advertise a cartoon television show, “Aqua Teen Hunger Force.”

Well. I assume that this is generating a lot of opinionizing about whether all buzz is good buzz and so on. One version of the story is near the top of Yahoo’s most-emailed list right now, but the quote above is from The Times’ version, which explains:

The devices are dotted with blue and purple lights and are shaped like “Aqua Teen” characters, mooninites. One character, Err, seems angry, with slanted eyebrows and what appear to be raised middle fingers.

I also think it’s worth noting the name of the marketing firm that apparently pulled this off: Interference, Inc. How perfect is that? At the moment, the company’s site doesn’t appear to be accessible, but here is an old interview with its CEO, in which he “raps about the tricks to a successful guerilla marketing campaign.” Among other things, he observes that, ” thing about guerilla marketing is that the media can buy into it and the campaign becomes the story.”

That is neat! Certainly in this case the campaign has become the story, and it’s possible that the story will last for a while. Turner Broadcasting has apologized, but it sounds like Boston politicians and law enforcement, not surprisingly, don’t seem quite satisfied.

Having written plenty of stuff about the general drift of commercial persuasion into day-to-day life — that’s what “murketing” is, y’a’ll — I can’t say I find any of this surprising. The tactic doesn’t surprise me, the flash of authority outrage doesn’t surprise me. But if anything significant comes of it — aside from a robust opening for the forthcoming Adult Swim movie — I will, in fact, be surprised.

Update: But Wait, There’s More! The incident is assessed, in all places, by WFMU’s blog, which offers the point of view that, basically, Boston authorities are fools! Don’t they recognize recurring Aqua Teen Hunger Force characters when they see them? “Why were no other cities sent into terrorist-attack panic mode by these innocuous and even kind of swell-looking ads? Can we safely assume that Boston has the fewest adult swim viewers per capita? Can we also assume they have the most high-strung residents and/or law enforcement team in the nation?”

Hunh. Okay. Well, maybe this isn’t a story about over the top murketing — maybe it’s a story about a humorless police state? The WFMU post points to this CNN story saying that some freelance artist types who helped execute the campaign have been arrested.

2nd Update: Boing Boing says Boston authorities are stupid, and points out that someone has already made a pro-Adult Swim T-shirt referencing the incident. So it’s all over. The campaign is a success, murketers are artists, and The Man should let them be.