Thu Feb 01, 2007
If Stupidity Was a Crime You Could Charge Everybody [Observations]
I'm becomming more and more convinced that any time anybody uses the phrase "post 9/11 world" they mean "down the rabbit hole". Yesterday the city of Boston spent shocking amounts of money and manpower checking out - well, you can see for yourself here
It's really hard to tell who is more stupid here. On one hand you have the marketers who have got to know that post 9/11, pre 9/11, or even on another planet that if you stick an electronic device without any discernable purpose under bridges and in subway stations, if it sits there long enough somebody is going to begin to worry about what it is. It's a simple problem to solve...
...because I'm having a hard time imagining that the whole marketing strategy would have been ruined by a simple phone call to Boston P.D. "Hey, heads up, we're placing these do-dads, we'll send you a photo so you know what they are."
On the other hand, you have the Boston police, who, when coming across something they haven't seen before right away assume it's a bomb. How much time could it possibly have taken to ask around "Does anybody know what this image is?" "Does anybody know how long this has been here?" If it's been there for three weeks and it hasn't blown up yet, chances are you've got a little more time to look into it.
This whole story is like a stupidity toss up.
More like brilliant, I'd say. Look at all of the free publicity it generated.
Posted by: Theresa at February 2, 2007 11:30 AMWhat I don't understand is why Boston was the only city that responded the way it did. These "ads" were placed in 10 cities across the country, yet Boston was the only one that responded to them, at least in that fashion. What happened with the rest of the cities? Should we be concerned that they didn't respond? Or should we believe that they all knew that it was a harmless promotional stunt? Hmmmm....
Posted by: yobruva at February 2, 2007 4:01 PM