It doesn’t make the news often, but illegal advertisers are caught. One episode many San Franciscan’s remember is when IBM stenciled a campaign on to the sidewalks across the City. The marketers were caught, and fined around $120,000. Not a small amount. However, as SF journalist Hank Donat put it, $120,000 is “a small fraction of the cost for Citywide media placement that could be seen by consumers here for months.” In the end, many argue IBM came out ahead even with the large fine and bad publicity. After all, they do say “any publicity is good publicity.”
But does the good publicity equation still work when the publicity is a bomb scare embroiled into a law enforcement blunder? If Turner does “take responsibility” and pay $1,000,000 to the city of Boston, keep in mind, placing an advertisement on this year’s Super Bowl costs $2.4 mil for 30 seconds of air time.
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[...] leo en uno de mis últimos descubrimientos (prometo actualizar el blogroll algún dia) un interesante artículo sobre la rentabilidad de algunas acciones de guerrilla, por ejemplo la realizada en el 2001 en san francisco por ibm para promocionar linux, un stencil urbano que debieron haber realizado con tiza o pinturas removibles pero que, casualmente, por una descordinación entre agencia y cliente, se hizo con pinturas permanentes. [...]