Marketer Sabotages His Own Campaign?
A costly campaign that put replications of pieces from New York's Museum of Modern Art was vandalized last week - by the campaign's own creator, seemingly without the client's consent.
Doug Jaeger, CEO of brand management agency the Happy Corp, created a campaign for MoMA that lead to 57 pieces being reproduced in posters that flooded Brooklyn's Atlantic-Pacific subway station.
But less than two weeks later, several of the pieces were alterered by Jaeger and buzz-building New York street artist Poster Boy, an anti-consumerist artist who makes it a mission of transforming posters and billboards into visual set pieces, according to New York Magazine. A replica of Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe painting depicts the movie star recovering from a nose job, and an abstract mural has what looks to be the tail end of an Indy race car sticking out from it.
Jaeger took credit for the stunt, telling the magazine "What I would hope is that it would cause debate and generate some argument, at a minimum."
What it has generated is anger, and apparent embarassment, out of CBS Outdoor advertising and MoMa, respectively.
MoMa's distanced itself from the controversy, with spokeswoman Kim Mitchell denying authorization of the vandalism. Jodi Senese, CBS Outdoor's executive vice-president of marketing, implied complacence by the art museum.
"As far as we're concerned, the Happy Corp is MoMa's agent and has been throughout this entire process," Senese told New York. "They vandalized our property and they really got involved in vandalizing MTA property as well. I think it's a negative press image that they're pushing on the MTA and on us."
That may be the case, not just for MoMa, but specifically for Jaeger. Intentionally damaging a campaign behind a client's back doesn't speak well for his credibility, if, of course, that's how it really happened.
Click here to read the magazine's story on the campaign ambush, including some pics; and here to read the response from CBS Outdoor. And finally, here to read about the origins of the campaign, courtesy of The New York Times.
