Aap! - Alternative Advertising Possibilities

At Send A Message , a collaboration between Dutch advertising professionals and creative Palestinian youth, web goers can purchase “real world tags” on the 620 Kilometer fence separating Palestinians from Israel.  For a mere 30 Euros, users can elect to have their personal messages spray painted on the fence. Purchasers are given 3 digital photos of the completed work for personal usage.

The revenue from the tagging goes to build new schools, soccer fields, youth centers and other humanitarian projects in the area.

Be it a proposal for a lost love, a web url, or a humorous message this is a great project that brings the world closer to this complex situation in a peaceful and non threatening way.

More @

Al-Jazeera’s Video Report “Painting peace on Israel’s concrete canvas“ 

Send a Message Project Website

“Advertising is a tax you pay for unremarkable thinking.” -  Robert Stephens of the Geek Squad and head of one of the growing number of brands that have been built without the help of major advertising agencies or budgets.

Read more in BusinessWeek’s Re-cap on Advertising and Branding 2007

Based in Paris, Zevs the anonymous Parisian street artist has been active since the early 90s.

Aside from his “shadow” work that consists of painting the outlines of the cast shadows thrown by permanent city fixtures - Zevs does wonderful work that “attacks” billboards and other city advertisements to create new interesting art.

His best known work is when he cut out shapes from a a gigantic Lavazza-poster in Berlin and stenciled above the poster the message: “VISUAL KIDNAPPING - PAY NOW!.” He is also known for attacking billboards and other city advertisements, spraying a dot of red between the eyes of models, letting it drip down like blood. He has taken this drip technique to corporate logos as well, and in his first solo show in London at the Lazarides Gallery, titled Liquidated Logos, he presented them on canvas for the first time.

Other links on Zevs:
- Zevs’ Commercial Work
- Zevs takes on McDonalds with “liquidated logos”

Around noon on every business day, thousands stride briskly along the sidewalk of Mumbaiâ??s (Bombay) business districts delivering lunches to 350,000 people daily, at a cost of about $3.80 a month in beautiful, simple multi-tiered lunch-boxes known as Tiffins.

These hard working individuals ensure that the businesspeople of Bombay can still have home-cooked meals personally delivered to their desks — without the inconvenience of carrying meals to work themselves on overcrowded trains — and at bargain prices.

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Aap!Global is a big fan of street art. Spencer Eakin takes great pictures of graffiti, street art and other items around the world.

Today we spoke to Spencer on Art, Street Art, Advertising, Global Differences and More… Read the interview below:

Aap: Tell us who you are
Spencer: I am married, vegetarian, a skateboarder, straight edge & part time traveler. I take photos as a hobby and do not leave home without my camera.

Aap: You stated in your email to me : “As a graffiti artist I always tried to get spots that were never done before, but get seen everyday.”
Why were you interested in being seen?
Most (but not all) youth experiment with alchohol, drugs and/or smoking. I had three vices: Skateboarding, Music & Graffiti.

Do you still tag?
No

Why did you switch to shooting pictures of tags?
Just to clearify. A tag is just quickly writing ones name. I take photos of graffiti. If somebody writes their name on a mailbox, that is a tag. If another person fills a packpack full of cans and sneaks out to the local freight train lay up, they are going to do a piece.

Where was the motivation as an artist/graffiti tagger coming from?
As a young teen I watch the film Style Wars on PBS and was hooked.

What do you think the similarities between graffiti around the world is?
Kids just want to create & express themselves thru vandalism. The street is thier canvas. There is also the thrill of not getting caught.

Is the motivation for tagging the same in the States as in Europe as in Japan as in elsewhere?
I believe it is. There is different styles, but is the same.

What made you want to track all the Space Invaders? Just for fun?
I first noticed Space Invaders in Tokyo in mid 2001 and started taking photos of them. The first one I saw and took a photo of was gone a week later. That is what hooked me on capturing them before they were gone. Then I came back to Los Angeles and started noticing them here. About two years ago, somebody started going around Los Angeles destroying them. Once I realized that was happening, I went out of my have to find as many as I could before they were gone. Since then I have been back to Japan many times to visit family and spot more of the Tokyo Space Invaders. I have also been to Paris where Space Invader is based.

Who are you favorite street artists?
How long do you have? TWIST, QP, Phil Frost, Kami, Sasu, Space Invader, Revs, Esow, JR, Banksy, Duece Seven, Daim, Colossus of Roads, Revok, The London Police, Mers, Matokie Slaughter, Delta, TheMac, Fafi, Pars Kid, Bigfoot, Zedz, Nylon, Plantrees, D*Face, Os Gemeos, Kress, Revok, Eine, Espo, Giant One, ZYS, Mode2, Jace, Broke and many others.

Do you think Street Art has evolved with the Internet?
It has in the sense that brought street art to people aren’t living in the midst of it.

With the ability for the internet and pictures to serve as a medium for critique?
This is good and bad. I find that if a person has beef with a certian artist, they will go around sites like FLICKR bashing the artist in the comment sections. The good thing, artists are able to trade info and hook each other up when traveling. It is also a safe place for people to look at street art.

What do you think about the intersection between art, graffiti and commercialism?
With art and commercialism I do not have a problem with any of it. With graffiti and other forms for street art, I do. It is because it is ours.

You told me you’re working on a book - do you have a preview to share?
Unfortunately I do not. It is too early in the process. The book will be about street art.

What do you think of the branding of taggers - like Banksy, Colossus of Roads, etc?
Do you mean calling these artists taggers? I think calling Banksy and Colossus of Roads taggers is wrong. This is there life. Banksy is thought provoking and political. Colossus of Roads is a retired railroad employee (I believe he is in his 60’s) with at least 10,000 freight trains to his credit. Each of which has different statement underneath his classic moniker.

Thanks Spencer.

I am off to see an old friend and go benching. Benching is a term used for going and watch freight trains go by while sitting on a bench and looking at the graffiti. Hard to do here is So Cal. We actually walk the line of parked freights.

See more of Spencer’s Photos

Outside of our office is a beautiful massive 40 floor wall scape that was just waiting to be covered with artwork. Using common vintage overhead projectors, a set of EVD 400V lamps, and artwork transparencies we were able to project large format graphics to create a fun, professional wall scape.

Want to see it person - visit the corner of Kearny / Pine in San Francisco on week nights.

Our Venezuelan partners, Kinetic Solutions, the premier alternative out of home media company in the region shared with us their successful implementation of a campaign using parking stripe advertising.

Download and print the Graffiti Report Card, inspired by Graffiti Critique, that allows you to give feedback to good/and bad graffiti. Just print out the PDF, fill it out when you come across some street art that could use some critiquing.

Wonder if anyone is using these for outdoor media in general?

Related Art / Marketing Project - Yellow Arrow the are project created and run by Counts Media in New York. Yellow arrow stickers can be obtained from their website and placed anywhere in the public realm. When encountering a sticker on the street, one can send the unique code printed on it as a text message to a particular phone number. Moments later a text message will be received with a message left by the sticker’s original owner.

The Yellow Arrow symbol means â??thereâ??s more here: a hidden detail, a funny story, a memory, and a crazy experience.â?? Each arrow links digital content to a specific location using the mobile phone. As an underground phenomenon, the project has grown a vibrant and tight community internationally, and Yellow Arrow stickers have been placed in 280 cities and 22 countries. Since appearing first on the streets of Manhattan’s Lower East Side in May 2004, Yellow Arrow has been featured in The New York Times, Wired Magazine, Newsweek, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, CNN and NBC…

Well at least according to research that appears in June’s Journal of Consumer Research. The research paper “An Examination of Different Explanations for the Mere Exposure Effect” concludes that repeated exposure to a product via banner ads generates a positive feeling towards that product.

The research is based on previous experiments that revealed the repeated exposure to a stimulus, even one that is barely perceptible will lead to the viewer developing positive feelings and thoughts to an otherwise neutral object. These feelings can include a liking or more subjective and complex associations such as “fame, truth, duration, loudness, stimulus brightness and darkness.”

The authors hypothesized that banner ads should work in a similar manner, given that “most viewers pay minimal attention to banner ads.”

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