New York Daily Photo Analytics

Friday, February 08, 2008

Orange You Glad

Orange is usually associated with the warm and positive, but this bright orange bike was part of an enormously controversial campaign. Timed with fashion week, DKNY chained up dozens of these orange bikes (the logo on this one in the photo is only partly readable) around town. According to the DKNY website, this guerrilla marketing campaign was part of an "Explore Your City" program in support of NYC initiatives to help cyclists. You can see a leggy model riding on the handlebars of a bike on their website. The store was offering free maps in their stores and various bicycling links on their site.
Where's the controversy? Well, many found it too similar to the national Ghost Bike campaign and considered the whole thing a cheap, tacky, publicity stunt (click here for my previous posting on a Ghost Bike in SoHo commemorating Derek Lake). I've skimmed hundreds of comments on numerous blogs and many in the biking community are infuriated - click here for a sample. Many of the bikes were illegally chained and confiscated by the police department. The Gothamist ran a number of articles with photos - click here. In one of them they said: "In our opinion, DKNY has crossed the line from "edgy" to "despicable," by co-opting grassroot memorials to dead people as a gimmick to peddle clothes."
Others, however feel the campaign was not intentional on DKNY's part, just poorly thought out. A DKNY rep wrote “we are very sorry if our well-intentioned ‘Explore Your City’ program offended anyone.”
Orange you glad not to be DKNY? ...

8 comments:

herbert said...

I came about your blog only recently but i love it already now, i am totally fascinated by the orange dkny bikes, do you think i could import one to Amsterdam?! My daily blog is on www.meeuwenlaan.blogspot.com Hope to hear about the bikes! Herreb@gmail.com

indieperfumes said...

A case of a pr nightmare for them. Seems like they meant well but didn't know what they were doing. I am not sure tho that it warranted all the backlash. More of a mistake than anything else.

 gmirage said...

Lol...thats weird! Great photo there. Thanks for the info and the laugh! =) Good day!

Uma por Dia said...

People tend to mix everything and bring everything to evil. The photo is beautiful. Thank you for the explaining text.

Anonymous said...

this looks like the one that was at Washington Sq. near 5th but i saw it on Thursday morning cut in half.

Fredrik said...

"many in the biking community are infuriated" "The Gothamist ran a number of articles"
You must be kidding me!? Is it really worth all that attention? To me it sounds like another typical industrial-country-problem, lol!
Great picture!

Anonymous said...

Such bright color would get your attention.

Clueless in Boston said...

My first thought upon seeing the bright orange bike was that someone came up with the idea to brand their bike so it would be easy to spot if it got stolen.

I think some people need to chill a little and not take everything so seriously. I hope the police give out the bikes to kids who can't afford one. However, I don't think anyone would want to ride them (except in Amsterdam:) because they are so ugly!