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Fallout Expected to Follow Guerrilla Marketing Fiasco

Marketers, not surprisingly, are likely reevaluating their use of guerrilla marketing tactics following Turner Broadcasting’s ill-thought-out stunt for Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

“The culture of guerrilla marketing could be affected,” Lucian James, president of San Francisco agency Agenda, is quoted as saying in Brandweek. James, who feels the marketing-stunt-turned-bomb-scare was completely on-brand for Aqua Teen, believes the fuss will soon go away. However, he also says that marketers will need to be the ones responsible when stunts go awry.

Adam Salacuse, CEO of AltTerrain in Boston, says that he believes the stunt will hurt the industry as a whole for only about six months, after which things will return to normal.

Interference Inc., the company responsible for the Cartoon Network campaign, reportedly posted an apology on its website, though no sign of the apology is currently in evidence. Drew Neisser, CEO of Renegade Marketing Group in New York says he has “no doubt someone at Cartoon Network will lose their job over this one.”