DKNY Marketing Campaign Co-opts Ghost Bikes

If you're familiar with Ghost Bikes, those impromptu memorials that pop up to mark places where bicyclists have been struck by cars, then you can understand why so many people are so ticked off by a recent take-off on the ghost bikes that attempts to promote a clothing line.

Seems the marketing geniuses for DKNY -- Donna Karan New York, a mid-range line of women's clothes -- figured that it would be an effective ploy to paint bikes bright orange, add the DKNY website and then padlock them all around NYC.

Regardless of whether the resemblance to the ghost bikes was intentional or not, the backlash was immediate. The DKNY bikes were installed on Thursday and at once began receiving attention from vandals. By Saturday they were all gone.

• Blog post from the Gothamist


• www.ghostbike.org
  
• Flickr photostream of Ghostbikes
• Flickr photostream of DKNY orange bikes

Images: DKNY orange bike - Matt Carman; a true ghostbike in Oxford, England - Joellaflickr