Remember the prank-based Toyota Matrix marketing from last year? Amber Duik sure does. She's suing Saatchi, Toyota's out-going ad agency, after their "pranks" made her believe a criminal and his pit bull were heading for her house.
We signed ourselves up for the gag, but received absolutely none of this kind of prank action, at least none that we knew of. Such was no the case with Ms. Duik, who received a series of phone calls from "Sebastian Bowler," a character made up by ad agency Saatchi&Saatchi who's apparently on the run from the law with his pet pit bull in tow. A series of emails from "Bowler" to Duik led her to believe this guy, who she didn't know, was planning on using her house as a place to crash as the heat blew over from his latest escapades. Naturally, Ms. Duik didn't think this was terribly amusing, and since she's from California, where everything must be blown out of proportion, she claims to have been "constantly in tears and shaking and sobbing in emotional distress" because of this "terror marketing campaign." Accordingly, she's suing Saatchi&Saatchi for an undisclosed sum. And here we thought all that would come out of this was a wastebasket full of marketing mailers. [bnet]