What Were They Thinking?

NBC has perpetrated one of the stupidest marketing gaffes I’ve seen in a long time, right here in my fair city.  Yes, NBC recently plastered our city’s sidewalks with graffiti "The 4400 Are Coming" to advertise their new USA network show The 4400.  It never occurred to them that defacing peoples’ neighborhoods might not be the best way to win their TV-viewing hearts.  I mean, really, it hardly takes a genius to figure out there’s a monumental flaw in that plan but somehow the NBC braintrust just didn’t get it. (But considering that these are the same folks who brought us Coupling perhaps it’s par for the course.)  And their “whooopsie! my bad ..hee” attitude isn’t helping matters. 
So far, the city crews have spent 35 hours removing 63 stencils and “have pages and pages of backlogs” as a result of having to divert these resources ..and more of this guerrilla marketing graffiti is still waiting to be cleaned up.  One Castro resident was so mad that he cleaned up two stencilings himself, scraping them off with his wire barbeque brush. “It’s very mean to vandalize someone’s neighborhood”, he said.  Indeed, it is mean, a concept which most people inherently understand and need not be told.  He also said he won’t be watching the show, which comes as no surprise to those of us who are not marketing geniuses at NBC.
Of course, the city is not taking this lightly.  The Board of Supervisors will most likely ask the city attorney to collect fines and damages from NBC. 
And it just gets stupider (I know that’s not a word but it should be, especially for stories like this).  NBC says they did not know it was against the law.  Oh, really bad move, boys—now you’ve really pissed us off.  For fuck’s sake, any fifteen year old with a spray can knows it’s against the law but we’re supposed to believe a mega-corporation with its own in-house law firm doesn’t? 
Then they said they thought the graffiti was supposed to be easy to remove.  Excuse me, you thought?  You didn’t actually test it to see but you thought.  Well, you thought wrong, asshats, as the groundskeeper at Sea Catholic Church can tell you.  He couldn’t even remove the stuff with graffiti remover.  And, by the way, notice I said “church”.  Yes, they guerrilla market'ed a church.  Need I say more?  I think not.
So, they want us to believe that they didn’t know that defacing property was illegal and they didn’t know the stuff was going to be so hard to remove ..because, well they thought so.  Hhhhmmmm ..so evidently NBC would rather be thought of as incredibly stupid, irresponsible and thoughtless rather than just plain irresponsible and thoughtless.  I don’t really get it but then I’m no marketing genius.

Comments

[A.]

Like you said, you are no marketing genius. So you really shouldn't criticize something you don't understand.

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. I will be doubled up on the floor over there, laughing at my genius wit.

[Lorena]

This just boggles my mind. Boggles, I tell you. Boggles!