Microsoft Vandalizes NYC

Brooklyn Bob writes "The New York Times (free registration etc.) is reporting that New York Tells Microsoft to Get Its Butterfly Decals Out of Town. Sure, it's "corporate graffiti", but the butterfly looks pretty good on the subway entrance." The story only covers a small part of their efforts to promote MSN, the "Microsoft operating system required" internet service. The first submission we got about the campaign described another part of it: Latent IT writes "I wish I had a link to submit with this, but strange things are afoot in New York City. At 61st and Broadway, 30-40 guys and gals in butterfly suits colored in the Microsoft colors, and carrying MSN banners just rollerbladed by, screaming at the top of their lungs down the middle of Broadway. Interestingly enough, this took them right near the under construction AOL Time Warner building. It seemed worth jotting down, but they were literally gone and down the street before I could reach my digital camera. (Place all bug on windshield jokes here.)"

Comments

Beat y'all to it. :)

[Triv]

Check out my journal on the subject from last week. I was going to submit it, but for the life of me couldn't figure out where it'd go, assumed it would be rejected and blogged it instead. :)

Triv

They've done this before, and should know better

[Zeddicus_Z]

You really think Microsoft would have learned after doing this before and having it backfire on them.

When the Xbox launched here in Australia, Microsoft spent obscene amounts of money on the advertising campaign (it actually began a few months prior to launch). Part of this was to spraypaint the green Xbox X on the sidewalk at pretty much every bus stop in central Sydney. Needless to say, the relevent local councils were not amused.

As far as I know, the responsible parties were ordered by the court to pay for council workers to clean every single spray. However, Microsoft is nothing if not careful, and instead of doing the original grafitti themselves, they'd contracted it to a local, well-known (in the industry) PR company.

Last we heard, poor [company name omitted] were stuck not only with the bill for councils to clean up the Microsoft grafitti, but also the responsability to clean it off themselves (the more they got to, the less council had to do and thus the less they paid).