Installing forty blinking boxes around Boston to promote a TV show for Turner Broadcasting is like yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater.\u00a0 In this case, Marshal McLuhan is wrong.\u00a0 The medium (boxes) was NOT the message.\u00a0 Our interpretation<\/em> of the boxes was the message.<\/p>\n

Context matters.\u00a0 Since 9\/11 we find ourselves in a dangerous situation, one that has us watchful and wary, interpreting words, actions, and objects in the context of terrorism.\u00a0\u00a0 We are prone to see danger where before we might have only seen guerilla marketing.<\/p>\n

This is not only intuitive: It is also a principle of cognitive science.\u00a0 We interpret experience based on our predispositions, which we can define as a habit of mind, a conditioned response, or an interpretive style.\u00a0 People in a war zone interpret explosions as life-threatening; on the 4^{th<\/sup> of July, as celebratory.<\/p>\n}

In The Fog of War<\/strong><\/a>, (a great documentary, by the way) Robert MacNamara reported that the Vietcong were predisposed to think of our presence in their country as another in a long line of foreign invasions, (Chinese or French, etc.) while we thought we were limiting the spread of communism.<\/p>\n

Amadou Diallo was predisposed to think that the occupants of an unmarked car creeping down the street in the middle of the night were planning to rob him.\u00a0 The policemen in the car were predisposed to think that a black man running from them into a building vestibule, and then reaching into his pocket when confronted, was a criminal pulling out a gun.\u00a0 As we now know, he was trying to give them his money.<\/p>\n

Those responsible for the blinking boxes in Boston were in search of publicity, which they got.\u00a0 They failed, however, to link the buzz they created to the product they were promoting because they did not anticipate that our predisposition to see terrorism in their ad campaign would render it worse than ineffective, it destroyed their credibility, cost them nearly a million dollars in fines, and one senior executive–his job.<\/p>\n

Creating a sensation without making a point is pointless.\u00a0 The admen in Boston were madmen because they failed as communicators<\/strong>, they didn’t comprehend their audience’s predispositions<\/strong>.<\/p>\n