Turner Broadcasting

Arguably the most famous, or should that be infamous, guerrilla marketing campaign to date was that of a Time Warner subsidiary, Turner Broadcasting inc. Moving away from traditional marketing strategies they “thought out of the box” when it came to advertising their new cartoon show “Aqua Teen Hunger Force”. They placed 40 small, black, electronically operated light boxes, around different cities including Boston, Mass. The marketing campaign backfired in Boston because people linked these boxes to bombs and caused wide spread panic. The whole point of what is called guerrilla marketing is to get the product or service into the forefront of the public. There is no doubt that this marketing campaign did exactly that. So was the campaign successful? If you measure success by the effect the campaign has on the general public then yes, it was a success. However, officialdom took a totally different view. The mayor called the event a “stunt” perpetrated solely in the interest of profit. He has a point and looked at from his point of view criticism is justified. But what about John Q. Citizen? The people the campaign was directed to? Most thought on reflection that the marketing campaign was good. I think I will side with them on this one.