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Reverse Graffiti: A Cleaner, Probably Legal Form of Advertising

By Bruce Carton

Not too many small business owners confess to The New York Times that they do not even know if their product is legal, but GreenGraffiti founder Jim Bowes did just that earlier this week (via Consumerist). Bowes' Dutch marketing firm, GreenGraffiti, places advertisements on public property, but does so in a most unusual way: it power washes corporate logos and messages onto dirty sidewalks. The NYT reports that using stencils and high-pressure water sprayers, GreenGraffiti employs a technique known as "reverse graffiti" to selectively wash down pavement, "leaving behind 'clean' words and images that gleam through the grime." Graffiti has obtained licensing agreements with the 10 countries it operates in to leave ads on the public spaces, although the NYT reports that the authorities granting these licenses are themselves not quite certain whether GreenGraffiti?s campaigns are legal. Clients include Starbucks, Good Housekeeping, MTV, the Amsterdam police, and a seven-country biodiversity campaign for the European Union. In the U.S., Domino?s Pizza paid $20,000 for a campaign spread across New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles last summer, which it estimates brought it about $1 million worth of publicity.Check out one of the Dominos images below, and see many other examples of GreenGraffiti's...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on June 10, 2010 (boomark / email).