Desert Island

With 50 tons of sand and 400 gallons of water, Mark Mason’s Team Sandtastic brought South Beach to Times Square Thursday to promote the second season of USA Network’s Burn Notice.

Several sand sculptors worked around the clock from 10 p.m. Wednesday all the way through 10 a.m. Thursday to re-create promotional images from the series about a blacklisted spy in Miami. Situated on Military Island (home to several TV promotions this summer), the 30- by 15-foot replica of the advertisement featured life-size sculptures of stars Jeffrey Donovan and Gabrielle Anwar. And for the added South Beach effect, bikini-clad women from Soza Models paraded around in the sand.Event producers from the Michael Alan Group breathed a sigh of relief, as a forecasted downpour overnight was just a brief drizzle. And despite a few flare-ups of wind, the dry, warm weather during the day posed no threat to the project. “We stuck it out through a little sprinkle and then we were good,” said Michael Alan Group vice president Jessica Murphy.

Murphy worked with USA Network’s senior manager of brand marketing, Sarah Demenkoff, and director of brand marketing, Colleen Mohan, on the concept. The Times Square monument, she said, was the largest in a series of similar designs erected last week. “We created smaller works in Chicago and Los Angeles that were six feet by six feet and those were just of Jeffrey sitting in a shaded beach chair.”

The publicity stunt was one of several Burn Notice marketing schemes taking place in the city, including a free ice-cream truck and a roller-skating street team with boom boxes blasting none other than “Disco Inferno.”