Controversy: YourMarketingSucks.com - Obscene?

Here's an interesting controversy that Chris Kieff alerted me to. He's the editor of "Unconventional Thinking," the blog of MSCO, a marketing and strategy consulting firm in White Plains, New York. The CEO of MSCO is Mark Stevens, author of the BusinessWeek bestseller, Your Marketing Sucks. He's written several other books including Your Management Sucks, The Big Eight, Sudden Death: the Rise and Fall of E.F. Hutton, and Extreme Management.

It seems that MSCO recently leased two outdoor boards on "two major roads leading into Manhattan" from outdoor advertising company Clear Channel. A simulation of the boards is belows:

MSCO says they've been getting lots of leads and business from these two boards. That is, until they received an angry phone call from a man who felt his six year old daughter had been inappropriately exposed to the phrase on one of the boards. The man claimed to be a "senior executive" with NetJets and allegedly threatened Stevens with "the full wrath of the Berkshire Hathaway empire." (NetJets is "a wholly owned subsidiary of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway company.")

MSCO refused to remove the board but less than two days later Clear Channel painted it over. According Stevens' account on the Unconventional thinking blog, Clear Channel reportedly told him they had been informed by the New Rochelle mayor's office that complaints had been received. The other board is still standing and MSCO has since purchased a third board from Clear Channel with the Yourmarketingsucks.com URL on it.

So here's the question: Does MSCO have the right to run "Your Marketing Sucks" on an outdoor board? Or, did Clear Channel act appropriately in removing it?

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Comments

[Anne]

This has been an interesting discussion with lots of strong opinions. Thanks for stopping by!

[Troy Worman]

Does MSCO have the right to run "Your Marketing Sucks" on an outdoor board? Yes. Did Clear Channel act appropriately in removing it? Yes.

[Anne]

You’re right---there are lots of ‘sub-issues’; way too many to tackle here. I just want to know if people think Clear Channel was right or wrong to remove/paint over the board.

[Paul]

Your survey is asking a non-mutually exclusive question. MSCO should not be running ads on billboards that offend community standards. Clear Channel should not have accepted the ads in the first place.

Once accepted and paid for, Clear Channel acted inappropriately in removing the billboards without discussion with Mark and without compensation. They were not ordered to remove the offending billboard by any public ordinance or by a court, therefore their action is borderline fraudulent (you can't say yes to something, accept money for it, and then not deliver it).

A yes or no response to your survey makes no sense.