Don't I Know You From Somewhere?

I'm surprised that none of the coverage of yesterday's invasion of Boston by little light men, or at least none of the coverage that I've seen, mentions what looks plain to me -- that the ad campaign that backfired was modeled after street art, meaning graffiti, wheat paste sheets, decals, etc. Ad shops that think of themselves as guerilla marketers try to plug into street art all the time on the assumption that can gain their products some street cred with kids. Sure enough, last night Boston police arrested -- what else? -- an art school student who they say conceived the campaign for an ad agency called InterferenceInc.com

So it makes senses that those little light men were mounted under bridges and at overpasses and so forth. Those are the kind of rag end city locations where a lot of street art gets placed. A couple of years ago I descended from my sumptuous wood paneled offices at Time to the simmering mean streets of America to write about it.

It looks to me like the ad campaign might even have drawn from at least two specific street art inspirations. One would be the perforated light box covers of the street artist who calls himself Thundercut.

Hip Hop Walker/Thundercut

The other source looks to be "throwies" -- a cluster of LEDS (that's Light Emiting Diodes for my low-tech readers) that are attached to a battery and a small magnet. Throwies were developed by Evan Roth and James Powderly, who operate under the name Graffiti Research Lab. They can be tossed against any metal surface to make street art without harming public space, since they can also be removed. A couple of my alert colleagues at Time wrote about them last summer.

The GRL website even has a disclaimer on it now assuring people that the Boston campaign wasn't their work. It also announces their latest project, a collaboration with a group called the Anti-Advertising Agency, to subvert those video ad screens that are turning up everywhere these days.

Be afraid, Madison Ave. Be very afraid.