Spraypainting London with biohazard signs and the wrong URL

April 20, 2007 1:37 AM

Picture the scene. You’re part of a guerilla marketing team dedicated to finding out new ways to promote a killer-virus movie. Thus, someone has the bright shiny idea of spraying biohazard signs all over London. But how do you tie in the biohazard sign with the movie? Ahaaa, you say, you’ll stick a web address at the bottom of the biohazard sign. Unfortunately, they spray-painted the wrong URL...
posted by badlydubbedboy (31 comments total)

Whoever owns the domain is being way too nice.
posted by jeblis at 1:40 AM on April 20, 2007

Didn't anyone learn anything from the Boston mess? I mean, plastic mooninites are one thing, but biohazard signs are another. If the text and/or URL gets worn off, you just have a biohazard sign mystifying and possibly scaring the populace. I mean, how's anyone supposed to know it's some stupid publicity stunt and not a spot where someone spilled a crate of infectious waste?

Not to mention that running around spray-painting *anything* on public property is unacceptable.
posted by Mitrovarr at 1:44 AM on April 20, 2007

jeblis is way too right.
posted by dopamine at 1:47 AM on April 20, 2007

what? That was a kick-ass movie that they should not be sequel-ifying! Boo.
posted by By The Grace of God at 1:49 AM on April 20, 2007

A whois search for ragevirus.com gives a creation date of 13-apr-2007.
posted by D.C. at 1:53 AM on April 20, 2007

Furthermore, the meta tags in the source of the front page of ragevirus.com are filled out like I'd expect a marketer to do, not someone simply doing a redirect because of a mistake.

meta name="description" content="Six months after the rage virus was inflicted on the population of the British Isles, the US Army helps to secure a small area of London for the survivors to repopulate and start again. But not everything goes to plan."

meta name="keywords" content="Rage Virus, 28 Weeks Later, 28 Days Later, Danny Boyle, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo"
posted by D.C. at 1:58 AM on April 20, 2007

If the text and/or URL gets worn off, you just have a biohazard sign mystifying and possibly scaring the populace. I mean, how's anyone supposed to know it's some stupid publicity stunt and not a spot where someone spilled a crate of infectious waste?

This is London. Not Boston. I have never met people more grounded in reality and less likely to panic for no reason. You know what most people did during the 7/7 bombings? They went to the pub because they couldn't get to work. The only people that are going to panic about some willy nilly biohazard signs are tourists.

Which is a big part of the reason I love this town.
posted by slimepuppy at 1:58 AM on April 20, 2007 [6 favorites]

Stop corporate graffiti.
posted by jack_mo at 2:03 AM on April 20, 2007

100 quatloos says the guerilla marketing team does control that domain name and site.
posted by zippy at 2:20 AM on April 20, 2007

Classic.
posted by jsavimbi at 2:24 AM on April 20, 2007

I'm sure this is viral marketing.
posted by Bokononist at 2:35 AM on April 20, 2007 [1 favorite]

what? That was a kick-ass movie that they should not be sequel-ifying! Boo.

What we need is a sequel free zone. With barb wire. Any sequels that approach will be shot and killed in case they are bad. Unless they have women.
posted by srboisvert at 2:37 AM on April 20, 2007

Yup, the site wouldn't have made it to Metafilter if it weren't for the "mix-up". Pernicious. I vote for deletion.
posted by painquale at 2:37 AM on April 20, 2007

OK, I just couldn't let that pass. But on a more serious note, I'm very curious how this redirecter supposedly figured out that the grafitti/URL was supposed to have anything to do with the movie. And, for that matter, how do we know now, except that he's saying so?
posted by Bokononist at 2:40 AM on April 20, 2007

This is just Pepsi Blue with one level of indirection; either you've been fooled, badlydubbedboy.... or, more likely, you're on the marketing team yourself. I note that you list yourself as a 'producer' -- of advertisements, perhaps?
posted by Malor at 2:46 AM on April 20, 2007

I'm with Slimepuppy. I lived in London during the IRA bombing campaigns. I expected to be locked out of an underground station at least once every few days because of a bomb scare, and about once every couple of weeks there would be roadblocks stopping me from getting back to my house (I lived in the very center of town). Once , there were two car bombs within a half mile of my house in a period of a few weeks.
Most people were just irritated at the inconvenience of it all, quite sensibly realising that their chances of being run over by a car were enormously much higher than their chances of being bombed.
I don't think you'll see Boston style hysteria about this.
posted by silence at 2:52 AM on April 20, 2007

And so at last viral marketing disappears up its own creative output.

The Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 , Section 7 (6) (a) requires the display of a biohazard sign in appropriate circumstances, but do not forbid its use in confusing, frivolous, or any circumstances. Scope for a nice amendment to suggest to a friendly back-bencher?

I suppose the marketing team have already done it.
posted by Phanx at 2:54 AM on April 20, 2007

Bokononist, "It's Back" is one of the taglines for the movie and the symbol was on the original movie posters, and the new ones, so they might have found it that way.

But, if the domain is owned by the marketing company or someone involved with them, then they've partly succeeded. After all, we're all talking about it, some of us will have linked to it from our own sites, and others will have sent it on to someone else saying "look how stupid this marketing team was!".

Oh, and the ragevirus site was registered by a web designer with marketing experience..
posted by Nugget at 2:59 AM on April 20, 2007

The key piece of evidence, to me, is the lack of the word "retarded" anywhere on the page. The marketing team is silly? No, it's being retarded.

Also, I note that the picture on the website and the one on flickr are one and the same. London MeFites, are there any more spraypainted signs out there, or is this the only one?

I'm usually not harsh about things, but either the marketing team is retarded, or the person who owns the website is (I vote both!). Time to delete.

Oh, and this has been MeTa'd.
posted by Deathalicious at 3:02 AM on April 20, 2007

Yup, the site wouldn't have made it to Metafilter if it weren't for the "mix-up". Pernicious. I vote for deletion.

Yup, please. In the same spirit as self-linking, except that it's suckering someone else into providing the exposure. Let's not play ball.
posted by dreamsign at 3:03 AM on April 20, 2007

Well, silence, I'd keep in mind that while you're describing the general populace, the hysteria in Boston was really on the part of the authorities. I didn't even hear about the damn thing until later.
posted by the other side at 3:04 AM on April 20, 2007

Bokonist: there's a fly poster campaign too which has a bit more info - IIRC, it says 28 weeks later on it. There are quite a few of these tags around the centre of town radiating out of Soho.

Q. How do you get a mostly trad-ad proof demographic talking about something?

A. When big bad companies done do f*ck up...

I think this is a rather pernicious hoax. Having said that, the guy who's flickr picture is used appears not to be a web marketer (although there is another guy with the same name who is one). This guy appears to work at skype...
posted by davehat at 3:09 AM on April 20, 2007

The key piece of evidence, to me, is the lack of the word "retarded" anywhere on the page. The marketing team is silly? No, it's being retarded.

He’s a Brit, which means the corresponding phrasing for him would be “the marketing team are being spas”, but that would sound far too schoolyard. He’s also got Google ads on the page, and appears to have set the meta information to maximise revenue from them.
posted by Aidan Kehoe at 3:09 AM on April 20, 2007

Shame for the lame marketing. I really liked the original film.
posted by Anything at 3:09 AM on April 20, 2007

slimepuppy sez re: 7/7 - 'They went to the pub because they couldn't get to work. The only people that are going to panic about some willy nilly biohazard signs are tourists.'

*laughs* I'm guessing they sold quite a few pints that day!
posted by chuckdarwin at 3:34 AM on April 20, 2007

The guy who owns the domain

 Mark McLaughlin
 6 Stanley Cottages, Anchor Hill
 Knaphill
 Woking, Surrey GU21 2JF
 GB

appears to work in advertising. Although that might just explain why the site doesn't look like utter crap and is carefully optimised for maximum Google spamage.
posted by public at 4:59 AM on April 20, 2007

I seem to remember they did the bio-hazard symbols thingy for the original movie aswell.
posted by TwoWordReview at 5:20 AM on April 20, 2007

Whoever owns the domain is being way too nice.

Seems like they're being way to greedy with those obnoxious link ads.
posted by delmoi at 5:31 AM on April 20, 2007

Yeah, there's no question about easily recognising those biohazard signs as being 28 Weeks Later-related - the symbol was very prominent in the 28 Days Later marketing, and the reference to Rage Virus removes any doubt.

Not saying that this isn't crappy meta-viral marketing - if only because I can't believe anybody would actually be dumb enough to forget to register the domain name - but pretty much anybody who's familiar with the original would have been able to work out what film this graffiti referred to.
posted by flashboy at 5:39 AM on April 20, 2007

Also, www.ragevirus.co.uk does redirect to the 28 Weeks Later official site, so there's a degree of plausibility here.
posted by flashboy at 5:43 AM on April 20, 2007

*hurries off to grab ragevirus.net, and fill it with Google ads and meta tags carefully crafted for maximum Google spamage.*

But with the word 'retarded'...
posted by Phanx at 6:13 AM on April 20, 2007 [1 favorite]