On Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Beyond

From The New York Times, one person's point of view on guerilla marketing.

I am an American consumer, and the battle to catch the corner of my eye is growing more desperate by the hour. Desperate and counterproductive, it now seems clear. We all know what happened in Boston the other week, when the guerrilla marketing of a cartoon series triggered a grand mal metro seizure, but only I know what happened in Los Angeles several days earlier. I was standing in an airport security line when I spotted an advertisement for Rolodexes printed across the bottom of the tub into which I was about to set my shoes. The ad bewildered me for a couple of reasons. First, I didn’t expect to see it there (even though, by now, I should have, since researchers estimate that the average city dweller is exposed to 5,000 ads per day, up from 2,000 per day three decades ago). The second and greater mystery, however, was why a major company would want me to associate its product with the experience of being searched. Rolodex — the official corporate sponsor of airport paranoia. It didn’t make sense.