‘Homeless Hotspot’ stunt draws ire at SXSW
The Garden Island
March 13, 2012
Austin, Texas (AP) “” A marketing stunt that paid homeless people to carry Wi-Fi signals during the South By Southwest Conference in Austin, Texas, is drawing widespread criticism.
BBH Labs, a unit of the global marketing agency BBH, gave 14 people from a homeless shelter mobile Wi-Fi devices and T-shirts that announced “I am a 4G Hotspot.”
BBH New York chairwoman Emma Cookson says the company paid them a minimum of $50 a day. She called the experiment a modernized version of homeless selling street newspapers.
But many have called the program exploitive. Wired.com wrote that it “sounds like something out of a darkly satirical science-fiction dystopia.”
ReadWriteWeb called it a “blunt display of unselfconscious gall.”
The experiment was meant to begin last Friday but rain delayed its implementation until Sunday. It stopped Monday.
image: cbc.ca