Guerilla advertising: War Veterans, a gas station, and plastic soldiers.

This is some interesting stuff… that sends a fairly powerful message when you take into account the actions of those actually sending the message (which is beautifully documented, of course). The Iraq Veterans Against the War put together this guerrilla piece which is pretty self explanatory, yet powerful.

Check out more photos of the event over at Osocio. definitely gets the guerrilla advertising mind rolling.

Hummer = Dummer?

Stumbled across tagadummer.com and was impressed, to say the least. It’s well-thought out, well planned, and just funny enough to get the point across without being over the top. One of the main elements of the site is a downloadable “letter D” to convert… well, I don’t really need to explain:

Now I’m not necessarily bashing on Hummers (although my current car does weigh less than one-third of a hummer). I’m just intrigued by the tagadummer.com website, and the message and means of message dissemination and social commentary. Check out the site for some more interesting stuff.

[disclaimer: as the tagadummer.com legal notice states as well, I don’t endorse vandalism and the goal of my post is to illuminate the educational efforts of tagadummer.com]

Gondoliers in Venice are for Obama?

I stumbled across this one via the always interesting eternallycool.net, “keep you up on everything that makes Rome eternally cool.”  It’s as self explanatory as it is slightly odd. But beautiful none the less.

In Case of Civil Unrest…

With the way things are going lately, this may not be too far off…

[via wooster via supertouch]

Beauty in the shadows

A lot of my photographic work has dealt with shadows, so I’m a bit biased, but this piece, entitled “seeder” by Lithuanian artist Morfai is just incredible.

Water Kiss by Sam3. water as street art.

I thought about posting some sort of poignant criticism of some piece of advertising, but I wasn’t really feeling it. Plus, I saw this and it changed my day just a bit. Comparison can be quickly drawn to the other recently popular video Motu by Blu, but this is just more simple in a pleasantly beautiful way. It really made my day.

Music for Life and a True Guerilla campaign can be inspirational

I realize this isn’t the most current piece, but i just stumbled across this video again and it made me think a bit So much “guerilla” marketing is minimally guerilla, and is more just experiential or outdoor/ambient. Assuming the campaign was really as powerful as this wrap portrays it to be, it’s a pretty huge impact for minimal effort and such a simplistic idea at heart.

It all supports the charity event “music for life” whose focus this past year was on drinkable water. It won 2 golden, 1 silver and a titanium award at Cannes Lions 2008.

Pretty Cool People Interviews: Tom 14: A different perspective on street art

I stumbled across this video the other day and it’s definitely stuck with me. Pretty Cool People Interviews Tom14, a Brazil-born Barcelona-based street artist has a unique perspective and interacts in beautiful ways with the city – his city. As he says during the interview,

“we have something to say and it’s our duty to interact with our city”

If you have the time to watch the full length of the the interview, it’s well worth it and puts things into an interesting perspective – to say the least. And if you’ve got some extra time, definitely check out some of the other interviews – well worth the time.

The Image Fulgurator. Art + technology + mischief = cool

Does much need to be said after the above image? well, probably. Check out the “Image Fulgurator.” A device created by Berlin-based artist Julius von Bismarck that literally manipulates the photos of others. Essentially a frankenstein of a slr body, a slr-flash, and a light sensor. While seemingly complex, it’s really a pretty simple concept with interesting results. I think I found my next weekend project.

The advertising mind in my wonders what kind of possibilities this has, but the artist side of me is just in awe. For more (including diagrams) check out the translated verison of Bismarck’s site here.

ZooYork: Pushing the boundaries of media (aka cockroachvertising)

In case you haven’t seen this, well… here it is. While I’m not exactly a die-hard ZooYork fan, they’ve got a great logo, and have definitely been pushing boundaries over the years, which is good for the sport, and good for media. The clip above is pretty self-explanatory. And their “How Do You Spread the Word” is an interesting (albeit not exactly earthshattering) use of YouTube and the whole user-generated thing. Whether or not it yields anything beneficial remains to be seen. But a thumbs up for using insects as a medium.