As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, on January 31 several odd black boxes with lights were seen around Boston and confused for bombs.  The media jumped right on it, and before you knew it, there was a mass hysteria surrounding the story.  The boxes ended up being a publicity stunt for Aqua Teen Hunger Force, a cable show that runs on Cartoon Network.  What the media didn’t initially report was that these same boxes were also found in eight other cities.

The immediate thought that popped into my head when I heard about this was:

How in Sam’s heck did eight other cities respond so calmly while Boston ended up shutting highways, bridges, and deploying bomb squads?

There are a few things to consider when trying to answer that question. 

- Boston (and surrounding area) is home to many fine universities, which enroll some of the most intellectual people in the USA.  The second is that

- Boston was the planning base for the September 11th hijackers, a situation which city officials never quite recovered from.

- Viewership of Aqua Teen Hunger Force may not be terribly high in Boston.

- The show’s primary demographic is men, aged 18-24.

None of those considerations mean much when you look at them individually, but if you add them all up you come up with a few theories:

1) Boston officials decided that it is better to be safe than sorry due to their past history with September 11 (read: they didn’t want to be caught sleeping at the wheel of another major incident).

2) Boston men aged 18-24 weren’t alarmed, since they responded well to the advertisement (read: the ads did a beautiful job with their intended market).

3) Smart people get scared easier (read: they are wise enough to not want to risk their well-being, even if it stops traffic).

We can’t know for sure which of those three (and maybe a combination) caused the effect we witnessed on the news, but we can derive a few risk management lessons in the marketing world from it:

- The goal of branding is not just to get publicity, it is to get publicity which furthers the recognition AND standing of the brand in people’s minds.  People will not associate Aqua Teen Hunger Force or Cartoon Network with happiness, I can tell you that much.  The current reaction by most Boston residents is more likely to be “those stupid sons of *******”.

- When you are trying to brand to a certain target, be sure that you don’t expose that particular ad to people outside that market - they may get the wrong message (cancelling out the benefit from your ad’s effect on the targeted market).  This is especially true when your “ad” is something other than an ordinary magazine or newspaper ad.  The more complex an ad is, in terms of the medium, the more the likelihood of someone misinterpreting it…sometimes with tragic results.

- Always take into consideration the time and place (context) of your ad.  This ad didn’t cause the same reaction in eight other cities - there must be a reason for that.  Taking into account the recent history of Boston, the current fear of mass terror (whether it’s coming from spinach, green onions, or Al Qaeda), and the rate at which news travels in the 21st century, this was not a good risk to take.

Hopefully these guidelines will help other marketing executives make better decisions on what can be “in play” and what should sit on the bench for another time.

As a final word, I found it ironic that the marketing firm that put out this campaign is called Interference, Inc. - and it only goes downhill from there.  Their slogan is “Always interfere”….

Mission Accomplished.