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Canadian Urbanism Uncovered

Guerilla advertising?

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Hello readers,
I need your help!

On my bike ride home from campus this evening, I passed a PT cruiser on the corner of Metcalfe and de Maisonneuve. There was a projector on top throwing a huge Nike ad onto the side of a building across the street. There was no company name on the car and I unfortunately didn’t have my camera to grab the scene. I’ve gotten used to seeing ad trucks rolling through the downtown (see above) but this “temporary” ad is a first.

Has anyone else seen this or know anything about it?

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8 comments

  1. I have seen just a plain forgettable minivan projecting car commercials on the side of a building. It was rather unoriginal. If you are going to project something on the side of a building, it might as well be INTERESTING or ORIGINAL or it’s a waste of time.

    The van spotting was at deBullion & Mont Royal

  2. I’ve never seen or heard of this type of advertising, but I bet building/business owners would object to other people’s ads being projected on their walls without having obtained permission or paid a fee. Fabulous. More ads.

  3. These guerilla ads have been projected on, and just as quickly vanished from, walls around Concordia. The ones I’ve seen have had audio systems mounted on the SUV to catch pedestrians attention. I don’t know which companies have been blasting their temporary graffiti on storefronts, but it raises interesting questions of ethical advertising, ownership and use of space. How can a street busker be fined for playing music, for example, while these companies temporarily expropriate wall space and blast their sound system?

  4. Speaking of projecting something interesting, last summer, I saw a movie being projected from an apartment onto a nearby building at St-Dominique and Mt-Royal. No sound though…

  5. (My wife wrote this, saavy gal that she is:

    someone out there is probably proud of this campaign and wants to recruit more clients… so the trick here is to look for press releases… etc…. as if you want the same….. who is handling advertising for nike… etc…

    likkkkky,
    k

  6. Hey, Misha. I have seen similar temporary projected ads downtown. When the latest Bran Van 3000 album came out there was a car set up beside Cafe Supreme on St. Laurent projecting their promo logos onto the building across the small street (can’t remember the name). Cheers.

  7. I haven’t seen anything like it, but I think it’s fascinating. Advertising is getting so creative both offline and online. Sites like Adwido and YouTube are taking advertising to a whole new level.

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