Randomness...

I haven't been able to get much going playing poker. The two tournaments I have played so far have been kind of frustrating watching people play really bad and get rewarded. Oh well, tomorrow is another tourney hopefully I can make a run and go deep.

I saw this via curbed, A Self-Guided Brooklyn Graffiti Tour this focuses on Williamsburg.

and this is brilliant...

African-American Boycott of L.L. Bean Enters 80th Year

Graffiti vs. Brands

Graffiti artists and Brands have one thing in common, they both would like to be ubiquitous. What happens when graffiti artists start attacking brands' ubiquitous logos? 

The artist attacking these brands is Zevs and his intention is to force the passer by to pay attention and question to these images rather than just letting them slip into our subconscious.

Another graffiti artist attacking advertising here in NYC is Poster Boy, you can read about him here and see his all of his work here. 

Poster Boy slices and mashes 2 or 3 different ads to create a composite image, which still remains brand heavy but adds cheeky irony to it. 

What does this mean for marketers/advertisers? Well we need to be much more cognisant of what media we are buying and where our message will be going. Brands that are socially conscious and accessible for dialogue will get attacked much less than brands that are closed off to 2 way communication and only interested in spreading a message. Social media/application, when done right, can be a great way to foster communication between brands and consumers. A good example is Comcast which was getting attacked for is poor customer service by a rather famous advertising critic, Bob Garfield of Ad Age and On The Media. Comcast started a twitter account in order to be more responsive and to start a dialogue with customers. Marketers need to realize that consumers and advocates have a lot more power to spread their message weather that message is positive or negative is up to the brand.

Enjoy your thanksgiving holiday.

Mapping Street Art

I found this via PSFK it is a social mapping site that uses google maps to chronicle street art around the world. I have been taking pictures of street art here in NYC for the past couple of years and uploading to my flickr but I will start to use this site as well. The UI is pretty simple and they allow you to upload your flickr pictures directly. I like the ability to segment the pics into the different categories (graffiti vs stencil vs gallery, etc.).  All in all a pretty useful site to foster a hobby. I wish the wooster collective had a good mapping function like this.