About 10 months ago I wrote about how Sony tried to advertise the PSP through streetart. This year another company seems to think this is a good idea.

Everywhere in Berlin you'll encounter a little three eyed monster advertising a product called Ogo. The Ogo is a portable chat/email/messaging device created by IXI Mobile and aimed at “generation SMS”¹⁾.

This time it is easily recognizable as advertising because the graffiti usually comes with the company URL or a product picture.

I was wondering how legal this campaign is and started digging for some more info.

It was created by a very new media agency called Robot Berlin. A post by Christian Boris Schmidt clarified the legal status a bit. He sent a mail to the guys, asking about the campaign and this is the answer he got:

The motives were created by Berlin streetart artists and accompany a Berlin-wide poster campaign. […] The look is controversial of course. This is why we are especially happy about the authorization by involved property managers.

So obviously at least the bigger works were approved by the appropriate owners. I'm in doubt however, if this is true for all parts of this guerrilla marketing campaign.

I still find it sad to have this last part of the public space to be commercialized. I'm especially disturbed by streetart artists joining campaigns like these (if this is in fact true). They might destroy their own legitimation as a counter culture.

What do you think? Is this legitimate advertising? What is your opinion about streetart vs. advertising?

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