• BBC , Monday, December 22, 2008 11 AM

Wow, it's getting hostile out there. Marketers not only have to contend with the barbs of scribes, now the hoi polloi is armed with pellet guns -- and they aren't afraid to use them.

A blimp advertising the Big Box Storage Centre in Sussex, England, was shot at by citizens who claimed it blocked their view, the BBC reports. The company says it received a number of complaints that the blimp was spoiling people's views (and one from a woman who said it scared her dog), but director Mike Rayner also says that many customers had used the firm after seeing the advertisement. So, while it costs about £500 to repair and re-inflate the blimp each time it's shot, it doesn't look like Big Box is abandoning airship anytime soon. Call it the "Ring-Around-the-Collar" effect: annoying but effective.

Meanwhile, the Charlotte Observer's Sarah Ovaska reports that "Mailman Steve" Padgett has become a folk hero for burying stacks of undelivered junk mail in the yard of his Raleigh, N.C., home. His attorney received a check for $3,011 last week to cover a court-imposed fine. The money was from a Chicago-based Web site that helps people raise money for pet causes.

Padgett says he didn't hold onto the thousands of pieces of mail because of a personal stance against mailbox waste. Instead, he was overwhelmed by the job and unable to sort the direct mailings with the regular first-class mail. "What I did was wrong," Padgett says. "It wasn't a Robin Hood story. It wasn't a protest." ;

Read the whole story at BBC »