Advertising in Urban Art: Graffiti & Street Art Marketing

The best places in Berlin are now marked as such by students of Communication in Social and Economic Contexts (Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftskommunikation, GWK) at the Berlin University of the Arts (Universität der Künste Berlin, UdK)! The group placed several controversial posters throughout the entire city, presenting slogans like - *U8 is the best place for buying heroin in Berlin. Amen.*, - *Mustafas is the best place for waiting in line in Berlin. Amen.*, - *Kastanienallee is the best place for dying on your fixi in Berlin ever. Amen.* or - *Revaler Straße is the best Technostrich ever. Amen.* For those of you who already visited Berlin, these best places in Berlin should not be that unfamiliar… ...

Looks like companies are going a step further with their urban art ad campaigns. After using stencils for guerrilla advertising, paying graffiti artists to paint some backdrops or planning large action street theater, they are now willing to let their ad agencies install impressing advert sculptures… Belgian paint manufacturer Levis (Akzo Nobel) recently came up with an urban guerrilla paint sculpture! The installation, planned and created by Belgian ad agency King George, consists of an XXL Levis paint pot mounted onto an existing lamppost eight metres above the ground so it appears to be floating. The post itself has been painted red, creating a stream of paint that looks like it is coloring the car park where it is situated, as was described on designboom.com. ...

I’m a big fan of French urban artist and adbuster Ox, who should definitely not be a stranger for you! Being busy for the last years, Ox created his billboard takeover artworks, adapting their environment in amusing way, all over the globe… Recently he wrote from the nice French city of Angers, where he did his best for the Artaq urban art festival. Again I have to say, that his paintings, imitating for example certain bus and tram designs, really work out! ...

London’s End of the Line crew (who are organizing the local Meeting of Styles) just sent an e-mail, informing about their latest Alien graffiti piece in East-London… As a tribute to the vision of the incredible directors and artists who created the world of Alien, the contemporary creative collective, which is well-known not just in London for their large scale mural productions, painted all the four panels on Great Eastern street! ...

Imagine a total usual small town somewhere in the heart of Europe (in Belgium actually), a average quiet square with a big red push button and a sign with the text Push to add drama inviting people to use the button. And now watch and… …just think WTF?! ...

Advertisment confuse every day our choises exalting qualities that doesn’t exist and creating a sort of shame world. Today, in a moment of financial insecurity, we must discover the real value and authenticity of what we have and we need. (BR1) Italian street artist BR1 just came up with a new, inspiring and very critical street installation, presenting crumpled poster ads destroying a window of a Berlin bus shelter. This installation is not vandalism in the first place, it’s much more a creative metaphor trying to get to the bottom of today’s advert-society. It illustrates the everyday fight between ads and urban environment and it is also using a certain humorous remark and wink, what makes it a simple, but effective piece of urban artwork. ...

After the top ten urban artists 2011 and this year’s most popular Urbanartcore posts here comes the third urban art recap of 2011: Top Urban Art Actions 2011! I tried to collect ten of the most inspiring urban art actions in 2011 and bring them together in one nice list, so that you have the chance to make sure you know all the great and extraordinary, subversive interventions and artworks… Explosion Wall Art by Vhils One of the most spectacular creational processes was the controlled demolition by Portuguese-born urban artist Alexandre Farto aka Vhils - just beautiful! ...

As I already wrote, ad takeovers have a long tradition in the international street art scene, especially in Berlin. Now, a guy called Vermibus took over some ad light boxes near Kottbuser Tor, Frankfurter Tor and Jannowitzbrücke in Berlin’s city and mutated the shown persons into some ugly, scary monsters! Looks like he used some kind of paint remover or buffing stuff to modify the advert posters…or maybe it’s just paint on the windows…not sure… ...

To give you a short overview about what happened in the last month and to feature some great stories a second time, I thought it would be a nice idea to recap the five top stories (with the highest count of visitors) at the end of every month. Here are the five top stories of July 2011: ATO: New Banksy or Best Street Artist ever? Probably to beef about street art, a Russian art collective came up with a funny idea - they invented ATO, the new Banksy! A funny must to see… ...

What sounded first like one of those normal stupid ad events by a big company worked out as a nice get together by artists from all over the world in Berlin. Last Friday, Adidas invited to their Urban Artists Series exhibition at Westberlin Gallery and teamed up with some really impressive artworks by some really talented urban artists like Mr. Jago (UK), Chow Martin (Canada), Pomme Chan (UK), Ville Savimaa (Finland), Russ Mills (UK), Rubens LP (Brazil), Robbie Wilkinson (UK), Claire Scully (UK) and Calvin Ho (China)… ...