Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Turner Broadcasting's Publicity Bomb

What was Turner Broadcasting thinking? It planted devices that resembled bombs near bridges and the New England Medical Center to promote a lame cartoon on the Adult Swim package on Cartoon Network, and the result was a swarm of bomb scares and the inevitable intervention of local and federal law enforcement authorities, not to mention nightmarish traffic jams on the late-afternoon commute from Boston. And apparantly nine other cities including New York and San Francisco were similarly "targeted" for this bizarre and offensive ad campaign.

Why Turner pulled such a tasteless stunt is presently beyond comprehension, unless it reflects how much contempt broadcast media types harbor for ordinary people. It obviously never occurred to anyone at Turner that people would become scared of objects under bridges and so forth that resembled bombs; certainly any sane members of a broadcast network pondering new publicity ads would take into account such a matter as whether an ad campaign will bring federal law enforcement officials after you.

I'm baffled at this one.

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