Comments on: Street Graffiti… or Advertisements?

By: ABSR

ABSR — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:07:40 +0000

I don’t care what most people think, street art and graffitti definitely make a city look better. If it would stay as art instead of gang tags we’d live in a near perfect world :)Does anyone know if there is a schedule of when Obey prints are going on sale?

By: MyLifeROI

MyLifeROI — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 21:57:06 +0000

@ Paula –

Not late at all! Glad you stopped by and hope to see you around :)

I agree with what you are saying about our fragmented attention and advertising dollars not having the same return on investment as they once had… but how do they quantify the street ads? I guess the same problem exists with most advertising… but at least with traditional ads you have some idea about how many people see the ads and what not.

I read about some graffiti artists a few years ago that were starting to paint over ads with just white paint to make it a blank canvas. They said they were just cleaning up the city (kind of like how we paint over street art :P). Can’t find the article now.

Didn’t hear about the Sony one with the phone cameras. Interesting and subtle… I don’t think I would catch onto it unless the people were overly excited about their “awesome camera.. I mean phone.”

Again, thanks for stopping by and I am glad this strikes someone elses nerve!

MLR

By: Paula

Paula — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:01:23 +0000

I’m a little late to the party on this one…just read your blog for the first time today. I completely agree with your comments here about advertising and street art and about the ugliness of it all too. Advertising is being insinuated into our lives in a lot of ways now, not the least of which is through popular culture. It’s because there is no longer any one sure way to reach the majority of the public. Our attention is too fragmented and the advertising dollar that used to be a good investment now no longer returns the desired result. How do you reach people who can DVR their favorite shows and skip the ads, or only buy the music they want on iTunes, or for that matter only read blogs on the subjects they are interested in? Graffiti marketing is one way, and it annoys me that graffiti artists get in trouble for doing it but an ad agency can paint a building with an ugly ad designed to part the consumer from their money with the approval of the powers that be. There are other less obvious advertising pitches like the Sony Ericsson one where “actors” asked people to take their pictures with their phone cameras as a way to make people aware of those phones and how cool/easy/etc they were to use.

If only we put so much effort into promoting education, art, and common sense!