"The whole atmosphere is charged with stupidity," said Lou Colasuonno, senior vive president at Financial Dynamics, a business communications and PR firm. "There is enough to go around between whoever conceived the promotion and Boston's reaction to it.
"On one hand, "who in today's world would dream of leaving unattended packages lying around as part of a promotion?" he asked. Then again, "Boston shut down half the town, while other cities didn't even notice or saw them for what they were. That seems to indicate they were over the top."For Clarke Caywood, a professor of public relations at Northwestern University, "anyone with a sense of recent history and any peripheral vision would have said, 'We are in level orange or whatever, and these are kind of mysterious looking things.' I can't imagine there was enough oversight on this project."For their part, the authorities "were doing the typical overreaction to make themselves look tough," he said. "There were two mistakes here rather than one, and there are going to be two good case studies out of it on law enforcement's error and the Cartoon Network's error."
PR blunders abound in Boston promo stunt - MarketWatch
To be honest there is enough guilt and stupidity to go around on this incident. Turner, its companies, and marketing firms are to blame to put something like this all over not only Boston but several citties. Boston did over-react to some degree. Someone should have been able to look at it real quick on a bomb squad and tell it was not a bomb. It really should have been a footnote in a slow news day. Instead, it bacame the news. It went on all day. While I work days and do not have a TV close by that I can scan the news on I can tell you there were lots of news stories coming from various news sources in my RSS feeds. The story really took on a life of its own.
2 comments:
As one who rides the subways of Boston every day, I appreciate the response of the officials.
I did not mean to imply they did not do what they were supposed to, if had been something serious and they did nothing it would have been bad. Of course the whole thing seems to be under the age of 30 you think the situation was stupid, over 30 it was a good response. While I think it was a good response, there might have been a little more discretion in release of information till they knew what it was. Of course the jerks that put them there talking about their hair in a press conference was not helpful either.
Good to see you big bro.
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