Free Peter & Sean
Wednesday, January 31, 2007 at 9:40PM 
On Wednesday night, police in Boston arrested two artist/Massachusetts College of Art students Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens, and charged them with “placing a hoax device that resulted in panic”, a recently enacted Boston anti-terrorism law.
How did this happen?
Turner Broadcasting’s subsidiary, Cartoon Network hired guerrilla marketing firm, Interference Incorporated, to promote their young adult oriented evening cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
Interference Incorporated is the two man shop of Sam Travis Ewen, sam@interferenceinc.com and Michael Glickman, michael@interferenceinc.com of New York City, (212) 995-8553. Since news of the story broke, their website has been pulled offline.
Interference Inc. created a set of LED lit figures of one of the show’s characters, called “mooninites”. These small, battery operated signs like the one pictured above were magnetically backed as to be easily hung on most metal surfaces. Interference Inc. conceived of this campaign. Interference Inc. sold the campaign to Turner. Interference Inc. was responsible for getting the tchotchkes designed, arranging for their manufacture, hiring dozens of art school students (of which Peter and Sean are only two) in cities throughout the country to hang them, and arranging for the distribution of said items into the hands of said students in the following ten cities of Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Ore., Austin, San Francisco, and Philadelphia.
Until today, the campaigns have been running in all 10 cities without incident for about two or three weeks. No other city besides Boston has made a complaint.
As a creative in the field of advertising myself, analyzing this campaign, it appears as though Interference Inc. actually went to great lengths to make sure the campaign didn’t break any graffiti or “post-no-bills” laws. Using magnets, it harmed no surfaces, and with its small size, it is probably not large enough to break laws barring billboards without permits. The choice of charging these sub-contracted, young local artists with a terrorist related offense over a promotion for a cartoon seems like a wild overreaction on the part of Massachusetts’ authorities. That’s just me.
To see images of the innocuous cartoon figure posted in context, go here and scroll left to right. They don’t look like dangerous devices. They look like a child’s Lite-Brite toy.
All of this is really beside the point. These guys were errand boys. They did not conceive of this campaign. They did not create these signs. They got paid by an agency in New York, Interference Inc., to go stick some magnets around Boston, who in turn were paid by Turner Broadcasting to promote a cartoon TV show. So the errand boys get charged.
Shirley Powell of Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. gave a statement taking responsibility, and apologizing to the city of Boston for creating an incident. I am not aware of any statement to have come from Turner regarding the fate of Peter Berdvosky and Sean Stevens. Shirley Powell can be contacted at shirley.powell@turner.com. If you feel Turner should take responsibility for their legal defense or, at the very least, give a statement in regard to their fate, please contact someone at Turner and diplomaticly voice this request.
If you believe that these young guys should not be held criminally responsible for actions they took on the part of an employer, please speak out to the media, and the state and city government in Boston, Massachusetts.
If you wish to respectfully voice your support for Peter Berdvosky and Sean Stevens, and request that the charges against them be reconsidered, you can contact Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, mass.gov@state.ma.us, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, office@marthacoakley.com, and Mayor of Boston Thomas M. Menino, mayor@cityofboston.gov.
You can also share your opinions with these Boston media outlets:
CBS4 Boston 4
WHDH Boston 7
Boston.com
Boston Herald
90.9 NPR Boston Radio
WBZ 1030 Boston News Radio
Unbeknownst to Boston politicians, Attorney Generals, and Police Commissioners, through their actions, they have created more free publicity for this TV program than any amount of guerrilla marketing budget could expect to buy, more than Turner ever dreamed of.
Merchandizing Opportunities
On the exploitation front, You can already buy the t-shirt on Ebay… wait, breaking news, now you can even buy an actual Mooninites LED sign. Wait, that one has been removed, but this one, this one, and this one have now been listed.
Video of Peter & Sean as DJs, from 2005
While researching this story, some googling led me to a video file through a cached link to a webpage that had been removed. I was still able to download a video of Sean and Peter Dj-ing some music together at a Boston area DJ gathering. I have placed this video up on YouTube.
Finally some sanity
On May 11th, charges against Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens were dropped.
Reader Comments (1)
It was posted anonymously, so I do not know who put it here.