As a marketing promotion, it seemed like a splendid idea: hide a coin worth US$10,000 in a well-known place, and tantalize treasure hunters by offering the finder a chance to win up to another US$1 million. But even the most well intentioned public relations plans sometimes come a cropper, and on Sunday Cadbury Schweppes was forced to apologize for its "tasteless" stunt.
Choosing an historic graveyard to hide the coin proved the undoing of the idea; a cemetery that contains some of America's greatest revolutionary heroes.
Scores of treasure hunters were lured to the 347-year-old Old Granary Burying Ground in Boston, but on Sunday its gates were locked because of fears that people searching for the buried gold coin would trample or desecrate the cemetery's 5,000 graves.
Among those laid to rest there are John Hancock, Samuel Adams and Robert Treat Paine, who led the revolt against British rule and were signatories to the American Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
"The coin should never have been placed in such a hallowed site, and we sincerely apologize," said Greg Artkop, a spokesman for Cadbury Schweppes, the British manufacturer of the Dr Pepper soft drink which ran the competition.
The company said none of the graves was damaged, and that the coin had been removed.
The winner of the prize will now be drawn randomly from among Bostonians who registered for the US$1 million competition, which required contestants to solve a series of clues and locate hidden coins buried in 23 US cities.
But city officials are fuming over the "tasteless" stunt.
Boston's parks commissioner, Toni Pollak, told the Boston Globe: "It absolutely is disrespectful. It's an affront to the people who are buried there, our nation's ancestors," he said.
Parks officials said they first learned of the Dr Pepper promotion when dozens of treasure hunters complained that they could not get into the graveyard because it was closed due to icy pathways.
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