The Boston bomb scare of yesterday turns out as nothing more than a non-traditional advertising stunt, something which I applaud in doing if it was more carefully orchestrated. As someone who is involved in advertising, I can attest that there are non-traditional means that are both cheaper and often more efficient in reaching a mass audience.

The scheme unhatched by Sean Stevens and Peter Berdovsky of the Cartoon Network just went too far. Both men have been charged with “placing a hoax device and disorderly conduct” in what the two defendants and their lawyer is claiming is “guerrilla” marketing. I must admit, throughout all of my years devising marketing schemes and through my years of learning how to market products/services in college, I have never once heard of “guerrilla” marketing.

Of course, if one looks at the sign, who would actually know what it’s about in the first place which means the originators of the campaign are blithering fools who don’t know how to market a product. But that, really, is inconsequential.

What turned this campaign upside down is when someone thought one of the planted 38 neon signs in Boston was a bomb. Who was the person who reported the signs as possible bombs though? I have a sneaking suspicion it was someone with the Cartoon Network who was upset because the signs did not originally have the desired goal. It would be the classic, ‘we were paid for XX amount of coverage and the campaign has not achieved it’ response.

The result of the ‘bomb’ hoax turned Boston into a virtual stand-still as the Boston police bomb squad ‘diffused’ al 38 signs, and it does have serious national security ramifications. How can two men plant 38 signs in Boston without anyone taking a second look? Stevens and Berdovsky show just how they affixed the signs in Boston in major traffic areas in a YouTube video which shows the development of the signs and the placing thereof.

Since these signs were nothing more than a marketing campaign gone horribly wrong, the two men should not receive any jail time in my opinion unless they were the ones who called in a bomb threat because the signage did not garner the publicity they sought. And that would not surprise me in the least after seeing the press conference both men gave.

Fines, yes, but jail, no. The real story should by why the Cartoon Network, owned by Turner Broadcasting, would hire such nimwits. But even then, the Cartoon Network has received the publicity they wanted.