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GM Teaser Campaign Foiled by Inept Coding

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Adrants reports that a nation-wide and very expensive serial outdoor teaser campaign may have been unraveled by the inadvertent inclusion of the punch line in interactive elements of the campaign. The outdoor billboard campaign features a single word revealed each day, with people theoretically curious about what 17-element sentence they will spell out by January 31. An online community, findthemessage.com, links people together to share guesses. Six of the 17 elements have already been revealed, along with their proper placements in the sentence. But a Flash file included in the specially-designed site contains in its code the sentence, presumably the correct one, "This is the last time you will ever have to feel alone on our nation's highways." This may refer to GM's coming inclusion of OnStar navigation services in all or many of its cars. If GM thinks quickly, it might be able to come up with a new sentence retaining those words in those places. One MarketingVOX staffer suggested, "This campaign costs big bucks; you will surely have higher car payments on this nation's car lots."

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