- Only well-segmented markets show dependable reactions
- Customers consistently buy into perceived benefits—not the actual features of a product.
Take, for example, the "Boston Blunder." Last January, a marketing company hired by the owners of the Cartoon Network put up a campaign to boost a particular late night program with a cult following. The advertising team put electronic advertisement boards across the country in nine major cities, depicting a cartoon figure of blinking lights with a "finger up" gesture. It was a creative guerilla marketing stunt. Only Boston city officials got a little more creative by shutting the city down for alleged bomb scares and poached the publicity that was meant for the cartoon characters. Despite the fact that the devices had been in the same spots for approximately two weeks, city officials claimed that the city had suffered a sudden nervous breakdown from the suspicious devices and that the monetary losses for the consequent closing down of the city was more than $500,000.
Recent history shows that city officials have suffered and reacted adversely toward guerilla marketing pranks in the past. In fact, the city officials of San Francisco charged a fine of $120,000 against IBM in 2001 for spray-painting "Peace, Love, and Linux" on city streets. Similarly, in 2002, Microsoft was let off the hook by the New York City Council with a mere warning and a $50 token fine for littering Manhattan with butterfly stickers. These instances, however, were more about breaking city rules than any failure in marketing strategy or tactics.
The drawback in the "Boston Blunder" was its target segmentation. The advertisement devices carried a symbolic message understood to any degree of coherence only by a closed niche market, but they were exposed to the gaze of an undifferentiated mass market. The targeted metropolitan crowd ranged across geographic, demographic, socioeconomic, and psychographic boundaries. It was definite that such uncategorized individuals would show great variation in their responses when perceiving a meaningless message. The advertisement boards contained glowing lights and wires; nothing to indicate their source or meaning. Considering the condition of a post 9/11 country continually shaken by the present "war against terror," the marketers could have avoided such a representation that did not deliver any plain meaning to the targeted masses, but instead, was open to panicky interpretations and served to alienate rather than assimilate.
The backlash of the failure in target segmentation included mass panic in Boston and the temporary close down of the city. City officials also accused two persons associated with the campaign of committing crimes. The advertisement agency and Turner Broadcasting (owners of the Cartoon Network) had to settle with government agencies to shell out $2 million to cover real and assumed losses, and the talented Jim Samples, head of Cartoon Network, had to resign from his job.
Still, the marketing program and the much-publicized backlash have not contributed to a significant rise in the number of viewers for the cartoon program. Considering that, the campaign took place in nine cities and the only negative reaction was in Boston. The consumer verdict on the campaign seems to be quite clear. Nothing fails like failure.
