Meet America’s Top Guerilla Marketer

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Wash Day: A GE event in August featured 800 feet of clothesline and 20-foot-high inflatable versions of the company's new washer/dryer. | photograph by Michael Schmelling

Street Theater: For the Discovery Channel, Interference sent "cavemen" into the subway in SoHo and "lifeguards" onto Manhattan sidewalks | courtesy of Interference

Ewen's plan involved 800 feet of clothesline along several blocks of Times Square, hung with garments and representing six months of washing that the new machine can supposedly handle before you have to put in more detergent -- a look "kind of like Christo," in Klein's words. Ewen also promised a 20-foot-high inflatable representation of the washer and dryer to plant on one of the traffic islands. PR firm Edelman would round up a "celebrity mom" (Alison Sweeney of Days of Our Lives signed on) to lead a live auction of jeans donated by assorted stars to benefit the Clothes Off Our Back Foundation. Interference would deploy a few dozen reps to chat up pedestrians about the product and hand out canvas bags stuffed with freebies.

Does this kind of thing really sell $3,500 appliances? Ewen, of course, says yes, although with a number of qualifiers, one of which was a surprise coming from an alternative-marketing guy. "You read in the Ad Ages of the world about, Is the 30-second spot dead? Is print advertising dead? I think it's a misguided argument." Much better, he argues, to win attention through a "hybrid" model, combining the reach of mass media with the "engagement" of street efforts. However, he is quick to add that the latter category has gotten more important than ever.

"Is the 30-second spot dead? I think it's a misguided argument," says Ewen.

One of the first electric signs in Manhattan, more than 100 years ago, was an ad. Six stories high, with 1,200 bulbs, it stood at the corner of 23rd Street and Fifth Avenue; under a 40-foot-long representation of a Heinz pickle, it said: 57 GOOD THINGS FOR THE TABLE. Commercial persuasion has long been a feature of the public sphere, not just the media. Ewen himself made this point in a talk this year at the School of Visual Arts in New York, noting such stunts as the Lucky Strike Easter Parade, organized by Edward Bernays, in 1929. This linked Luckies -- reconceptualized as "torches of freedom" -- with feminism, in an ersatz street demonstration intended to expand the brand's female customer base.

Ewen says he brings up Bernays's definition of propaganda in every client pitch: "the establishing of reciprocal understanding between an individual and a group." In Ewen's case, that "understanding" is between his client and the consumer masses, and it's being established "all over the place." Interference, he told his audience at SVA, is in the business of creating what media theorist Douglas Rushkoff calls "social currency." We need "images, stories, ideas" to connect, Ewen said, and this is what he is trying to create: social currency that happens to be associated with a brand. A client's brand.

Promotions consisting of a guy in an oversize T-shirt handing out flyers, Ewen says, result in litter, not social currency. For the SmartDispense stunt, reps wore T-shirts with a sock sewn on the back, as if stuck there by static cling (relevant to product; attention-getting). The giveaways included bottles of water and coloring books shaped like the appliance's door (useful; tied in to product design). And the celebrity-pants auction created a little spectacle -- giving witnesses "some social currency that they can then tell their friends about."

Some of Ewen's young colleagues showed me footage of past campaigns. A professionally choreographed dance routine in San Francisco's Union Square on behalf of Expedia. Men and women in bathing suits, climbing down from lifeguard stands scattered around Manhattan, talking up the Discovery Channel's Shark Week. Actors in Robin Hood costumes buying people coffee in Philadelphia to promote a show on BBC America, and an actual wedding performed in New York's Diamond District as part of a promotion for iVillage. They talked about the satisfaction of "getting the consumer to stop and have an experience with you."

All this raises issues that Ewen has been hearing about, it's safe to say, for pretty much his entire life.

Ewen grew up on the Upper West Side in the 1970s and 1980s (when "it wasn't the mall it is today," he says). He was considering a career as a music producer and was deejaying on the side when he encountered what appeared to be a street protest. Only it wasn't. The marchers who showed up at the industry event were carrying signs announcing the launch of Bad Boy Records. It was a publicity stunt -- and it made an impression.