Persuasion Goes to the Big House . . . Follow Up
5th February 2007
You’ll recall that workers with the guerilla marketing firm, Interference, Inc., managed to get themselves arrested under terrorism-related charges for their activities in Boston as they put up bomb-like devices around town aimed at getting an audience for a new cable TV cartoon show. Under the premise that all publicity is good publicity, did this persuasion and influence stunt work? We now have some tentative evidence.
And, it appears that all publicity is good publicity. Various indicators of viewership show favorable changes. For example, hits on the cable TV website were up 77% following the media uproar and actual viewership of the new program also rose 20%. Whether any of these increases will hold remains to be seen, of course, and the point of the Interference activity was to get new eyeballs and not necessarily to hold them. As a result, I’d have to say that Interference did its job.
Remember, all bad persuasion is sincere and Interference is sincerely insincere.