• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, February 6, 2007

One thing is certain: It was a fiasco. But what, exactly, should we call the "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" promo? Was it guerrilla marketing--unannounced and covert? Was it viral? Or was it word of mouth? Blogs and professional forums are buzzing. One thing is not in dispute: The campaign cost Turner Broadcasting an additional $2 million--payback to Boston for its security costs.

This was obviously an outdoor campaign, right? Not so fast, says Stephen Freitas, chief marketing officer of the Outdoor Advertising Association of America.

"We don't really recognize these guerrilla campaigns as outdoor campaigns," Freitas said. To meet OAAA's definition of outdoor, the campaign must use "some sort of permanent signage--paid media space that is permitted or franchised or approved through some process." To let viewers know the advertising intent, Freitas said media companies identify their signs with imprints and other visible branding.

Freitas is more prone to classify the Aqua Teen campaign as guerrilla marketing gone wrong. "The key to guerrilla marketing is working with the authorities to let them know what you're up to." But Erik Hauser, founder and creative director of Swivel Media in San Francisco, isn't convinced the Aqua Teen work qualifies. "Guerrilla marketing is achieving traditional marketing aims using nontraditional methods. Yet to some extent, everything's been tried, so nothing in the public space is no-traditional any more."

By way of example, Hauser recalled that "postering used to be guerrilla, but now it's become mainstream," comparing the magnetic light boards to unauthorized posters. The campaign was covert and unauthorized, but that doesn't mean it's guerrilla, he said. It just means it's illegal.

Is the viral claim more credible?

Virginia Miracle, director of word-of-mouth marketing for Brains on Fire, hesitated to call the campaign "viral," which she defined as "something that's easy to pass along. It can be electronic or person-to-person verbally."

The ever-popular Wikipedia defines viral marketing as "marketing techniques that seek to exploit pre-existing social networks to produce exponential increases in brand awareness."

Now the definitions get fuzzy. The two men employed by Interference Inc. were certainly trying to tap into pre-existing social networks--namely male college students at Boston's academic institutions. The signs were cryptic communications to a specific group, fairly described by the New York Post as "the Doritos-munching insomniac stoner crowd."

This group constitutes a loose, self-identifying social network--buttressing the "viral marketing" definition. The marketers were also trying to penetrate cartoon-geek cliques: One sign was positioned next to a comic store on Harvard Avenue in Brighton, Mass. Marketers could imagine college students and cartoon fans that were "in on the joke" spreading the word about enigmatic signs that would confuse others.

However, Kevin Glennon, the creative director of an eponymous full-service ad shop in Boston, says the key element in viral marketing is the requirement that viewers must pass the message along to reap some reward offered by the advertiser. For example, he cited a Virgin Mobile campaign in Britain where participants got specific codes they had to match with other cell phone owners at concerts. If they matched successfully, they got a prize--but only after telling dozens of others about the game. "Just being popular doesn't make it viral," Glennon cautioned.

Does the promo qualify as about word of mouth?

The relatively small size of the signs--18 inches on a side--plus their (mostly) unobtrusive placement suggest Interference was relying on social contact and conversation to spread awareness of them. While placing the devices on bridge abutments and other transportation structures might seem badly chosen in retrospect, it's worth noting that the signs were up in Boston for three weeks before they were even noticed by the general public. And they were ignored entirely in nine other cities.

But categorizing it as word-of-mouth just dodges the question, said Swivel Media's Hauser: "Everything is word-of-mouth, because a great advertising campaign equals people talking about it." Miracle had a different take, asserting that a true word-of-mouth campaign "seeks to facilitate conversations" that serve the marketer's advertising goals. The Aqua Teen campaign inspired a great deal of conversation, Miracle acknowledged with a laugh, but "I don't think this was the conversation Turner was looking for."