Some ideas sound so good in the office. Like the one about planting lighted signs showing alien life forms around major U.S. cities as a way to generate buzz for an upcoming Cartoon Network movie.

	Bzuayehu Tesfaye, Associated Press Sean Stevens, left, and Peter Berdovsky appear for arraignment yesterday in Boston, where they pleaded not guilty to charges stemming from an advertising campaign gone awry. Click photo for larger image.

Then somebody calls the police and things get out of hand.

For those who missed it, Boston officialdom spent hours Wednesday worrying about possible terrorist attacks, shutting down highways, bridges and part of the Charles River. After a "suspicious package" was blown up, Turner Broadcasting System officials apologized for a marketing campaign gone awry.

And the spotlight quickly turned to the advertising industry and the increasingly daring techniques that have become all the rage in recent years. Known as guerrilla marketing, the idea is to get a company's message out through nontraditional ways.

Clever marketers have advertised on bathroom doors, handed out products at clubs and fed information to influential bloggers. They've hired actors to pose as tourists and chalked sidewalks.

Sometimes, they push things a bit far and people get a little mad. Usually, it's a case of no harm, no foul.

Not this time.

"It is outrageous, in a post 9/11 world, that a company would use this type of marketing scheme," said Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino after he learned a corporation had planted the signs.

"I am prepared to take any and all legal action against Turner Broadcasting and its affiliates,'' including the Cartoon Network, which airs the series about a talking milkshake, a box of fries and a meatball, "for any and all expenses incurred during the response to today's incidents."

Two men who authorities say were paid to place the devices around the city pleaded not guilty yesterday to placing a hoax device and disorderly conduct. Peter Berdovsky, 27, and Sean Stevens, 28, were released on $2,500 cash bond -- apparently amused by the situation, even though they face up to five years in prison.

They met reporters and TV cameras and launched into a nonsensical discussion of hairstyles of the 1970s. As they walked off, Mr. Berdovsky gave a more serious comment. "We need some time to really sort things out and, you know, figure out our response to this situation in other ways than talking about hair," he said.

The devices didn't prompt calls of concern in any of the nine other cities where Turner said the devices were placed. But public safety officials in Boston and a large segment of the city's older generation condemned the publicity campaign as unthinkable in a world after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"Just a little over a mile away from the placement of the first device, a group of terrorists boarded airplanes and launched an attack on New York City," police Commissioner Edward Davis said in an interview with The Associated Press.

"The city clearly did not overreact. Had we taken any other steps, we would have been endangering the public," he said.

In hindsight, it might not have been wise to put unidentified electronic devices around bridges and other key spots, advertising industry professionals conceded yesterday.

A skittish nation tends to react first, ask questions later. "In today's climate, obviously this was inevitable," said Bryan Ward, head of Downtown ad agency Giant Ideas.

But, he added, it can be hard to anticipate everything when an agency is sifting through dozens of ideas, looking for the one that will break through the clutter.

Few seemed to think that Turner Broadcasting officials actually wanted to create this kind of reaction. An official apology was posted yesterday on the network's Web site, expressing "deep regret."

Still, a certain audience will see this as another case of the younger generation being misunderstood by the out-of-touch establishment.

Many bloggers yesterday seemed less than impressed that no one in a position of authority in Boston recognized the Mooninite characters from the TV show, "Aqua Teen Hunger Force."

"If the boards had instead [used] the picture of Charlie Brown, would they have also shut down Boston in fear?" asked Zood on a New York Times blog.

The Boston Globe reported that one police analyst actually did recognize a character Wednesday afternoon after one of the signs was moved into a darker area, triggering the lights that formed the figure to brighten.

Meanwhile, it didn't take long for the small billboards to show up for sale on eBay.

For one group that has been calling for the industry and the government to rein in the growth of nontraditional marketing, this week's episode reinforced the concerns about how intrusive marketing has become. "This is an industry that respects no boundaries," said Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert, in Portland, Ore. "They will cross any line to hawk a product."

Those in the business might consider that a bit harsh, but they say advertisers can't afford to rely simply on the old marketing venues in this increasingly splintered media world where network television and local newspapers no longer dominate.

Michael Grzymkowski, president of East Liberty agency Idea Mill, read a statistic recently that a little more than a decade ago, advertisers could be pretty sure they were reaching most of the country by placing ads on three or four TV shows.

Now that cable channels have exploded and the Internet is serving up entertainment, it would take advertisements on dozens of shows to reach the same percentage of the general public.