'Aqua Teen Hunger Force' stunt brings Boston to a halt
Smallscreen News
By Stone Martindale Feb 1, 2007, 4:45 GMT
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1) anyone who says this is a failed marketing campaign go check how many matches there are for Aqua Teen Hunger Force on news.google now (LA Times said it, you'd think they'd know something about advertising.) I bet about 1000 times more people now know what ATHF is now than yesteday.
2) Paranoia has become the american way of life. The govt has already figured how to leverage that into controlling the populace. Time to take a chill pill before its too late (or is it).
how about posting a picture of the sign? *geez* Talk about paranoid.
i think too many people are taking '24' too seriously
I suppose anything with lights, wires, and batteries should be considered hacked together bombing devices. Give me a break.
This was a good marketing campaign now 100x more ppl know what athf is
I am a photographer for a local paper here in Boston, MA.
As soon as I saw the thing, i said it was a viral marketing campaign for ATHF.
THIS IS ALL VERY SILLY TO ME. This is a HUGE over-reaction to what will eventually become a very common marketing strategy. They did not figure this out early on and arrested some poor art student as an expression of their hurt pride. KUDOS BPD for being so far out of touch with the modern times....
regardless of how people are reacting to these 'threats' it's evident that there's enough concern out in the public and government where things like this is a big deal. i don't personally get the blinking device as a marketing campaign cuz i don't watch much of ATHF, but it seems like if there was some kind of disclosure on the event before, it might have made things less crazy for everyone.
Of course the ad campaign 'worked' - duh - but it was also unethical - duh!! - because it disrupted thousands of unwitting people's lives (a public nuisance), plus the actual crime of hoaxing bomb squads ie. misusing police resources.
Turner should pay for the police work plus a criminal fine plus another fine for hooliganism, in the form of a contribution to a general charity fund. And it should be enough to discourage trendy wanna-be's to come. Anything less than 5 million here will make their corporate ad managers crow about the clever score. The fine should take into account the size of the perpetrators pockets and it should more than wipe out their standing to gain.
They didn't look like bombs, it wasn't a 'bomb hoax.' They were little magnetic things with lights on them in the shape of a character form the show. It looks nothing like a bomb at all and this whole thing is so stupid as to be beyond words. Turner shouldn't be sued, the morons who shut down a city because there were blinking light cartoon characters on things should be sued.
Ten cities. Ten devices per city. Fourteen days. That's 1400 'device-days' of exposure of crowds to something that experts can't tell from an improvised explosive device before ONE of them was noticed. GIVE IT UP FOLKS!!!!! If Al Qaida attacks they WILL succeed, 4 for 4 just like last time. If they aren't it's because Bush is paying them off and protecting Bin Laden.
To those saying Turner should pay-- if the devices have been out for weeks (in multiple cities, none the less!) how and why are they responsible for Boston's sudden rash of stupidity? The fact that Boston is trying to pass this off as a 'hoax' is simply damage control to save face. Own up, Boston; your administration is foolish and simply out of touch.
stupid....it goes to show what a great society we are in right now, hardly the harmoneous, peaceful nation we all long to live in.
How could anyone not know
Sure, in retrospect it seems quite silly, but when you think about it, authorities HAVE to respond to strange packages like this. They didn't know what it was, and they can't just ignore it because it might NOT be a bomb. And it's not as if bombs haven't been placed by madmen before.
Think about if the opposite had happened: if there were strange, unidentified packages strewn about, and the authorites ignored them because they figured they were probably harmless. Later, they explode, killing hundreds of people. This is the kind of think the government is trying to avoid, and frankly, I don't blame them.
Sure, in retrospect it seems quite silly, but when you think about it, authorities HAVE to respond to strange packages like this. They didn't know what it was, and they can't just ignore it because it might NOT be a bomb. And it's not as if bombs haven't been placed by madmen before.
Think about if the opposite had happened: if there were strange, unidentified packages strewn about, and the authorites ignored them because they figured they were probably harmless. Later, they explode, killing hundreds of people. This is the kind of think the government is trying to avoid, and frankly, I don't blame them.
I work in advertising, and this is the sort of thing marketers and their agencies are doing since the mass market is becoming so splintered. In this case, Turner got more publicity than they ever imagined they would. But actions come with consequences. Turner should have to pony up some big bucks because their actions caused a big disruption in the Boston economy and created anxiety within thousands of people. You don't get a free pass when you do that.
SARGAM YOU TWIT…
NOW PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO WHAT THE CYBERNETIC GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PAST FROM THE FUTURE IS SAYING WITH THE WORDS THAT ARE FLOWING OUT OF HIS MOUTH…(pssssttt…it has something to do with global warming)…
Thousands of years ago...Thousands of years ago, before the dawn of man as we knew him... there was Sir Santa of Claus: an ape-like creature making crude and pointless toys out of dino-bones and his own waste, hurling them at chimp-like creatures with crinkled hands regardless of how they behaved the previous year. These so-called 'toys' were buried as witches and defecated upon and hurled at predators who were awoken by the searing grunts of children. It wasn't a holly jolly Christmas that year; for many were killed!
Thousands of years ago...the ice had made the globe inhabitable. Santa Ape did not know where the North Pole was. How could he? He was born before science existed. So he carved and placed his workshop right here (referring to Carl's house). Long before they unionized, and Christmas was celebrated at each full moon, in front of the great red ape
….I'm not finished. You should have gotten a snack. A war-like race of elves from the Red Planet landed on the ice-encased Earth and they were immediately enslaved by the unevolved Santa Ape to make his confused toys using galactic elfin technology. Toys were made into recognizable shapes and given names like 'train,' but these toys were also thrown at predators and defecated upon because they were so stupid. Christmas still sucked, in a big way.
...And that is where babies come from.....for machines...
The only people that misused police and government resources were the police and government of Boston. These Lite Brite™ things were placed in Boston and 9 other cities 2-3 weeks ago! Mayor Menino claimed 'It is outrageous, in a post-9/11 world, that a company would use this type of marketing scheme.' But is this scheme really outrageous when 90% of cities where these things were placed were not put into a panic by incompetent, overzealous government officials?
Only Boston officials went off half-cocked (reacting like hysterical Jerseyites listening to Orson Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast in the 1930's), put their citizens into a panic, and ground their city to a screeching halt. Not to mention, they sat on their butts for 2-3 weeks before doing so.
Mayor Menino's post 9/11 paranoia is just another bit of evidence (like the oxymoronicly-named, Bill-of-Rights-attacking 'USA Patriot' Act) that we are our own worst enemy. We are stripping ourselves of the liberties and freedoms that previous generations over the past 230 years sacrificed so much to attain. And by doing so we are handing victory to the radical Islamists.
People of Boston! Do not let your incompetent officials off the hook for their paranoid, extreme over-reaction that shut down your city! Demand accountability! Do not let them divert you from examing their own failures by blaming Turner, its marketing agency or their employees.
If Boston officials can't tell the difference bomb and a Lite Brite™, do they even have a chance to prevent a real bomb attack?
i cant help but sit here laughing, then having a break and laughing some more!
when a light up sign cause cause such havoc, it really shows how truely paranoid some people are.
surely some1 knew and just left every1 else running round like headless chickens, i would have.
'Turner shouldn't be sued, the morons who shut down a city because there were blinking light cartoon characters on things should be sued.'
And if they hadn't 'shut down' the city (which they did not - they took precautions to block off AREAS of the city within the range of reported sightings), and something had happened, you'd be screaming for their heads. They took precautions; that's their job. Whether the Boston officials are out of touch or not, I can't believe Turner Broadcasting was stupid enough to endorse this idea. In these times, planting any sort of unexplained and unannounced device in a major city is just asking for panic. It will be a miracle if the higher-ups who approved this don't go to jail.
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