Guerilla Marketing Backfires
Proving once again that New York is a unique market unto itself, behold the latest attempted guerilla marketing effort from DKNY.
The concept is simple: take a bike, paint it obnoxiously bright orange, paint a URL on it, and we’ll get noticed. But you didn’t realise how intense New York can be, and how we don’t exactly like abandoned, non-functional bikes laying around the streets of our fair city. DKNY wasn’t ready for this…
Yup, the police swiftly nicked as many bikes as possible, getting them off the streets and therefore out of the eyesight of potential customers. Not to mention this:
Yup, people viewed the bikes not as unconventional advertising, but as spare parts. Bikes were stripped for parts, in this case seat, handlebars, and chair. I’m sure there are more glaring examples not pictured.
And to start with, the bikes are in bad taste because they resemble the common Ghost Bikes, white-painted bikes that memorialise the scene where a cyclist has been killed.
DKNY is a strange brand in general: When it debuted in the mid 90s, people simply wondered “Why does Donna Karan need a low-priced brand extension?” I don’t think we ever got the answer. While New Yorkers may enjoy seeing the City in advertising, we don’t like being tagged as underclass or otherwise second-rate.
Photos and the stories in general are from Gothamist »
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