Boston Revisited

Since the Boston urban spam incident last week, there has been much discussion in the blogosphere about the campaign. A couple of blog posts really stood out.

Seth Godin made us think back to the concept of challenger brands

More than ten years ago, I co-wrote four of the Guerrilla Marketing books. At the time, Jay Levinson and I were focused at helping small businesses break out of the helpless rut of leaving advertising to the big guys. There were plenty of niches where smaller organizations could really thrive without becoming pariahs in their community.

It hasn’t taken long for the game to be totally rebuilt. In the face of high ad rates and stunningly low effectiveness, many advertisers are getting selfish and angry. Rather than investing the money they would have spent on ads into products and services, they’re just running more invasive ads. Even in this picture of one of the Aqua Teen guerrillas we see a logo and an ad… in fact, it’s almost impossible to go anywhere or do anything without seeing an ad.

At Wooster Collective, Marc & Sarah criticise the police and media’s reaction but also point out:

Advertising and guerrilla interventions don’t have anything to do with each other. Marketers need to resist the urge to try to blend them together. If something is an ad, I personally can live with that, but call it an ad. Don’t try to make it seem like it’s some sort of guerrilla intervention done by artists. It’s not. It’s an ad. Call it an ad. Label it as an ad. Don’t try to have it both ways.