Verizon Fined For DC Graffiti Campaign


More guerrilla marketing via public vandalism: Verizon has been fined $1050 for spraying graffiti on Washington D.C. sidewalks advertising the Yellow Pages.

To be fair to Verizon, the ads were sprayed in water-soluble chalk, so this isn’t really permanent defacement we’re talking about. In fact, it sounds pretty innocuous, given Sony’s tendency to hire street punks to spray paint ads on private property. Nevertheless, Verizon was fined $150 per act of vandalism, raking up seven fines total.

And we’re glad — non-permanent and innocuous as it may be, we don’t want to live in a world where even graffiti is fucking corporate shilling. Marketers — can we leave street art as the last bastion for the disestablishmentarianist, please? When I’m scrawling my ex-girlfriend’s number above men’s room urinals, I don’t want to have to vie for ad space with a multi-million dollar Verizon campaign.

Verizon Fined by District for Chalk-on-Sidewalk Advertising [Washington Post] (Thanks, Adfreak!)

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