Out of the Box

Gimmicky Marketing Gone Awry

By Menachem Lubinsky on February 02 2007

Ever so often there is an event in marketing that becomes part of the classic text of Marketing 101. Last week’s "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" bomb which virtually shut down the city of Boston is the latest seismic event in the world of marketing. Experts are debating whether the scare in Boston was after all a colossal failure or was it a success despite the fallout from an idea gone bad.

Large companies like Turner Broadcasting typically retain marketing companies to come up with gimmicks to promote a new production. In the past, some of these firms and consultants have become known for resorting to “guerilla marketing,” typically employing non-conventional marketing methods to draw attention to a product or event. In this case, it meant planting these “bombs” in some 12 cities to draw attention to an upcoming production.

It turns out that in the other 11 cities, the gimmick went off without a hitch, but in Boston it triggered major panic, resulting in the arrest of two men who planted the “bombs.” It does seem a bit insane to resort to a gimmick in such a super-sensitive environment when people are virtually strip-searched at airports. One would think that in the post 9/11 era, the least that these marketers would have done would have been to alert law enforcement officials of what they were up to. Instead, it took more than 12 hours and some alert pedestrians to get wind of the “promotion.”

In the ensuing debate amongst marketing officials, most felt that it was a marketing gimmick that went totally awry and that Turner Communications and all who were associated with the fiasco need to concentrate on damage control. But there was a minority that quoted an old adage: “I don’t care what you say about me so long as you spell my name correctly.” In other words they are saying that the bad publicity actually turned into good publicity, calling more attention to the production now than it ever would have received had the gimmick not gone bad.

An elder statesman in marketing blamed “the young turks in the marketing profession who forget that creativity still has to be handled responsibly.” This is, of course, a general indictment but it seems that more traditional marketers have a problem with this brand of guerilla marketing in the first place.

The Turner fiasco is of course not new to marketing. Ever so often we are exposed to an ad that is in bad taste and actually creates a backlash. The same is true for marketing gimmicks that are either in bad taste or are so creative that no one gets it.

Several years ago a bank launching a new branch on Long Island used a full page ad with only a dollar bill on it. On the bottom of the ad was the phrase: “Coming Soon.” While many marketing people thought that it was clever and that it would draw enough attention so that when the dollar bill appeared again with the name and location of the branch, people would say “Aha that’s them.” But the marketing agency representing the bank actually found that most readers of the ad had no clue about what the dollar represented and when the full ad finally came out, they did not associate the dollar with the initial teasers (still think it was a pretty neat idea!).

The pressure to come up with gimmicks in marketing is obvious. We live in a world with a great deal of clutter and a short attention span. Marketers like me are constantly faced with the challenge of coming up with creative ideas that will get a client’s product, service or message noticed. We often don’t have the luxury of having enough resources or even time to thoroughly research our creative idea. Hence, the pressure to come up with something quick and within budget limit that works. The problem is that sometimes it fails.

The Turner debacle stands out not so much because it failed but because it does appear to be insensitive and irresponsible. Some of these creative types sometimes get so carried away with an idea that they don’t look too deeply into the tunnel to see the possible negative outcomes or even the long-term implications in positioning and branding.

The question that many people ask nowadays is whether it is possible to use conventional marketing and still get the notice that will make the marketing a success. The answer is an unequivocal yes, but perhaps the drawback is that it may not have the quick fix that a guerilla marketing concept might have if it works.

There was some discussion in the business media about just how badly Turner’s and the marketers’ reputation has been tarnished. I don’t doubt that with some good damage control, they will ultimately overcome the debacle. They already agreed to a payment of $750,000 to the city of Boston for the resources it expended to recover the bombs and the losses suffered as a result of disrupted services. It sounds like a token amount compared to what the real costs of the disruption might have been, but this show of goodwill is a first step in restoring their reputation.

Menachem Lubinsky (mlubinsky@lubicom.com) is President & CEO of LUBICOM Marketing Consulting (www.lubicom.com, 718.854.4450) a firm that specializes in strategic business and not-for-profit planning and implementation. LUBICOM is also well known for its role in developing such major events as Kosherfest, Jewish Expo and Jewish Marketplace.

Out of the Box is a collection of strategic marketing articles that Lubicom has published on various topics, trends and ideas in the marketing world. The articles have been published in the Hamodia weekly newspaper circulated on three continents to a readership of well over 100,000.

The name, "Out of the Box" is a term used frequently in business nowadays to describe creative thinking that is not the norm. It is meant to help a business pull away from the pack or separate oneself from the competition. It is to some extent fraught with risk, simply because it is not the run of the mill thinking, but it is at the same time the key to reaching the next opportunity.