New York – The Times Square street vendors who alerted the police to a smoking Nissan Pathfinder on May 1 seemed to be acting on a combination of their streetwise instincts, their sense of civic duty, their military training and the advice of Allen Kay.
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They did not know Mr. Kay personally. But they were familiar with his work.
As the chairman and chief executive of the Manhattan advertising agency Korey Kay & Partners, Mr. Kay has written about half of more than 80 slogans that the company has created since it was founded in 1982. The tagline for EmigrantDirect, an online banking division of Emigrant Bank — “More Money for Your Money” — was his. The one for Stuart Weitzman, the retailer and designer of women’s shoes — “A Little Obsessed With Shoes” — was his, too.
Of course, the vendors who noticed the smoking Pathfinder had a different one in mind: “If You See Something, Say Something.”
The phrase was coined by Mr. Kay for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, one of his company’s clients. The day after Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Kay sat in his office on Fifth Avenue and wrote the slogan on one of the 3-by-5-inch index cards he carries around to jot down ideas. The company had already done advertising work for the authority, but Mr. Kay created “If You See Something, Say Something” before transit officials even asked. He said he wanted to help prevent another disaster and to do something positive in the aftermath of the attacks.
“The model that I had in my head was ‘Loose Lips Sink Ships,’ ” Mr. Kay said. “I wasn’t born during World War II, but I sure knew the phrase and so did everybody else.”
“In this case,” he added, “I thought it was ironic because we want just the opposite. We want people to talk. I wanted to come up with something that would carry like that. That would be infectious.”
In 2002, the transportation agency saw a need for a security-awareness campaign to encourage customers to report suspicious activity or unattended packages, and they turned to Mr. Kay, who still had the phrase on his index card. By January 2003, the slogan was on posters and placards in subway cars, buses and trains.
It has since become a global phenomenon — the homeland security equivalent of the “Just Do It” Nike advertisement — and has appeared in public transportation systems in Oregon, Texas, Florida, Australia and Canada, among others. Locally, the phrase captured, with six simple words and one comma, the security consciousness and dread of the times, the “I ♥ NY” of post-9/11 New York City.
The transportation authority received a trademark on the slogan from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, though unauthorized uses appear to outnumber authorized ones.
A Google search of the phrase produces more than 150 million results. It is the name of a song by the alternative-rock group Taking Back Sunday, a critically acclaimed monologue by the performer Mike Daisey and a book about the work of the French photographer Touhami Ennadre. It has been displayed on buses and billboards throughout Ohio, courtesy of the state’s homeland security office. And it has appeared on the flesh of at least one New Yorker, Joy Rumore, 31, who tattooed the slogan (in English and Spanish) on her right leg in 2007, in the same font and style used on the subway posters.
“It was just sort of a geeky thing to do,” said Ms. Rumore, the owner of Twelve 28 Tattoo in Brooklyn. “I didn’t get it to make some sort of political statement. I got it because I love the subway. I love New York. It’s just an identifiable logo.”
City leaders, transportation authority officials and marketing experts have praised the line for making New Yorkers more alert to suspicious activity and for helping to reverse the see-something-do-nothing syndrome epitomized by the 1964 killing of Kitty Genovese, whose screams as she was being stabbed to death in Kew Gardens, Queens, were heard by numerous neighbors who failed to call the police.
The campaign urges people to call a counter-terrorism hot line, 1-888-NYC-SAFE. Police officials said 16,191 calls were received last year, down from 27,127 in 2008.
“It’s strong, it’s simple and it’s a call to action,” said Mary Warlick, the chief executive of the One Club, a nonprofit organization that honors creative work in advertising. “At the same time, everybody feels a little bit better because here’s a line of advertising that did some good.”
But the phrase has been criticized by many for fueling paranoia and fear. It has been parodied, mocked and twisted around by artists and activists (“If You Fear Something, You’ll See Something,” reads a flier on www.fulana.org).
i like mine slugen beter: “If you see a suv ful mit explosives, run like hell”.