2ndMass: When Viral Marketing Goes Wrong

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When does viral marketing cross the line from surprisingly pervasive to creepy? Maybe when TNT plaster mirrors in seemingly every hotel room near San Diego Comic-Con this year with stickers for their 2ndMass promotion for upcoming alien invasion show Falling Skies. Unsurprisingly, some people didn’t appreciate what seemed like an invasion of their privacy, but what caught my attention was what happened when someone complained to the hotel about it, with one person revealing via Twitter:

Security and the front desk didnt know anything about it when [I] called them last night.

Later, the same person added, “the manager told me [that] the bellman did it but none of the other staff was notified.” None of the other staff including security or the front desk? Either hotels have underestimated how people might feel about a clear sign that people have been in their room without their permission, or those behind the promotion have been surprisingly lax in setting the entire promotion up… and may have ended up upsetting as many people as they enticed into checking out the show.

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