East Village Feed to Zynga: Please Clean Up ‘Mafia’ Dollars

‘Mafia Wars’ Promotional Dollars Outside  St. Marks Bookshop (Near 31 Third Ave)

Litter outside Starbucks, 2nd Ave

Zynga, the SF-based game developer, recently began a regional marketing campaign, including SF and NY, to promote their new game, Mafia Wars. The marketing included pasting promotional ‘dollar bills’ throughout city sidewalks:

The City of San Francisco was not happy. Quoting an SFGate.com article from this last weekend:

A steam cleaner has to be brought in to do the work, and it takes about 45 minutes in each location, plus administrative time, [Department of Public Works] officials said.

I’ve seen a public response to SF - but nothing to NY, so I’ve reached out to Zynga for more information on possible cleanup efforts in our neighborhood. Below is my email to a Zynga’s CEO and PR representative from this last weekend:

Hi Lisa & Mark:

Hope you’re having a nice weekend.

I’m not sure if you’re aware - but there was recently a large promotional campaign throughout NYC’s East Village to promote your new Mafia Wars game — dropping stickers on parked cars (http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/05/zynga-mafia-wars/) and ‘dollar bill’ stickers on the sidewalks of the neighborhood. While I’m sure these stickers were very effective in the short term for your promotion, they are now unattractive, illegible eyesores. Are there any efforts by Zynga to remove these?

I also see that these were similar marketing efforts in San Francisco:
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/08/zynga_guerilla_marketing.php

I run a locally focused blog for the East Village neighborhood — http://eastvillagefeed.com

I’d love to include a response from Zynga for my readers. Please let me know if I should direct this email elsewhere.

Ken
—
eastvillagefeed.com
evfeed@gmail.com


Mark Pincus, CEO Zynga, VentureBeat.comI also reached out to @MarkPinc and @Zynga on Twitter and am awaiting response:

@markpinc - are there any cleanup efforts planned for the Mafia Wars sticker campaign around NY’s East Village?

@zynga - are there any cleanup efforts planned for the Mafia Wars sticker campaign around NY’s East Village?

I will keep everyone updated as I hear more from Zynga. I am awaiting their response. In the meantime, I encourage all East Villagers to also reach out to Zynga regarding cleanup.

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  • posted 24 August, 2010

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