Bomb scare: intentional or not?

We all know what happen about a week ago in Boston and if you don't you should. Turner Broadcasting System, a media company that represents many significant media outlets such as CNN, TNT, and Cartoon Network, decided to do a new type of guerilla marketing. They hired two people in each city to place what seemed to be "lite-brights" in over 10 cities in the United States.
Boston seemed to react a little differently then TBS had predicted....or did TBS want this reaction? What started out as a small-budget guerilla street promotion, quickly transformed into a national debate-thanks to the internet, newspapers, websites, and cable. Advertising has fully leaked itself in so many parts of the American peoples life that the next step seems to be politics and "the news". Although TBS and Interface Inc. (the advertising agency) have apologized for their actions, I believe they knew of the consequences and thought this would be more beneficial then just a regular magazine and TV campaign. People working in advertising are not stupid. They understand how to manipulate the media. It was even reported that a man, who was clearly linked to Interface Inc., was video taping Boston Police bomb squad removing the device but did not tell them it was harmless.

In the end they only have to pay a measly $2 million for the incident, thats not even a 30-second spot during the super bowl, and they got so much more then super bowl hype. Whether they planned this or not they received so much more national media coverage then magazine and TV commercials could ever produce. So was it intentional or not?