Commercial graffiti

Commercial graffiti or graffiti advertising is the commercial practice of graffiti artists being paid for their work. In New York City in particular, commercial graffiti is big business and since the 1980s has manifested itself in many of the major cities of Europe such as London, Paris and Berlin. Increasingly it has been used to promote video games and even feature prominently within them, reflecting a real life struggle of the street artists.

Graffiti has been used as a means of advertising both legally and illegally. Bronx-based TATS CRU has made a name for themselves doing legal advertising campaigns for companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Toyota, and MTV. In the UK, Covent Garden’s Boxfresh used stencil images of a Zapatista revolutionary in the hopes that cross referencing would promote their store.

Tech Giants Hewlett Packard used graffiti company Graffiti Kings based in London to showcase the creative use for their Sprout computer by producing a video, during the video Hewlett Packard showed many pieces of graffiti art while the Graffiti Kings artist used the Sprout computer to draw digital graffiti. Smirnoff hired artists to use reverse graffiti (the use of high pressure hoses to clean dirty surfaces to leave a clean image in the surrounding dirt) to increase awareness of their product. Shepard Fairey rose to fame after his “Andre the Giant Has a Posse” sticker campaign, in which his art was plastered in cities throughout America.

Graffiti as a commercial activity dates back to Ancient Greece, when pottery makers employed artists to decorate their items with motifs and intricate designs. The modern era, the phenomenon has been strongly associated with New York City since the late 1960s and the hip hop culture that emerged in the 1980s, according to a 1993 New York Times article that focused on the issue. The term “commercial graffiti” was used in an article by Time as early as 1968 and used to describe activity in Chicago as early as 1970. In 1981, Times Square was referenced as featuring “commercial graffiti” through “Japanization”, and more recently[when?] further “Japanization” of children’s culture is cited to be taking place through forms of graffiti in video games and in the increasing popularity of Japanese innovations such as anime. Since the early 1980s, commercial graffiti has evidenced itself in Los Angeles and other major American cities and across Europe, particularly Paris, and London and Berlin and features on the walls of numerous galleries across Europe.

With the increasing popularity and legitimization of graffiti, it has increasingly undergone commercialization. In 2001, computer giant IBM launched an advertising campaign in Chicago and San Francisco which involved people spray painting on sidewalks a peace symbol, a heart, and a penguin (Linux mascot), to represent “Peace, Love, and Linux.”

In 2005, a similar ad campaign was launched by Sony and executed by TATS CRU in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami, to market its handheld PSP gaming system. In this campaign, taking notice of the legal problems of the IBM campaign, Sony paid building owners for the rights to paint on their buildings “a collection of dizzy-eyed urban kids playing with the PSP as if it were a skateboard, a paddle, or a rocking horse”.

In New York City, legal graffiti and employment has become big business, appearing with owners’ permission on everything from walls to railroad boxcars. According to Cooper and Sciorra, many young graffiti artists are keen to use their talents and aspire to achieve entrepreneurial success. Local businesses employing well-known graffiti artists are also said to enhance their credibility and business-customer relationship as well as reducing crime by employment. One prominent group in New York City is the “King of Murals” which run a commercial graffiti business and have been employed to promote global brands such as Coca-Cola and M&M’s in advertising campaigns and even hired by schools, hospitals and other healthcare groups to create artwork. Bronx-based TATS CRU has made a name for themselves doing legal advertising campaigns for companies like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Toyota, and MTV. Smirnoff and even Microsoft have hired artists to use reverse graffiti (the use of high pressure hoses to clean dirty surfaces to leave a clean image in the surrounding dirt) to increase awareness of their product. In 2011, Klughaus Gallery started Graffiti USA, a company offering interior graffiti murals for companies. Their work includes murals at the corporate offices of Linked In, Facebook, MasterCard, and ABC News, which featured a Graffiti USA commissioned mural on October 8, 2014 episode of Nightline.

In Boston, Massachusetts, a company named Alt Terrain specializes in hiring graffiti writers to paint legal murals as part of public performances which are hyped as “brand events” and may cost up to $12,500 for live performances. In Pittsfield, Massachusetts for example, after the death of Michael Jackson, Solomon “Disco” Stewart and a team of four artists named “The Berkshire Graffiti Network” for instance were paid to paint a “Michael Jackson Tribute” mural on the wall of a Pittsfield market on North Street.

In the United Kingdom, Covent Garden’s Boxfresh used stencil images of a Zapatista revolutionary in the hopes of cross referencing would promote their store. Even the Israeli West Bank barrier has acted as a canvas for professional graffiti for hire teams. One Palestinian pacifist group will spray paint any message for 30 Euros, providing that it is not racist or violently motivated. The Art Crimes website is the first to be established in the field of commercial graffiti and hires some sixty artists to produce artwork.

Fashion:
Graffiti has become a common stepping stone for many members of both the art and design community in North America and abroad. Within the United States, graffiti artists such as Mike Giant, Pursue, Rime, Noah and countless others have made careers in skateboard, apparel and shoe design for companies such as DC Shoes, Adidas, Rebel8 Osiris or Circa Meanwhile, there are many others such as DZINE, Daze, Blade, The Mac etc. which have developed into gallery artists and at times do not even use their initial medium (spray paint) to produce artwork.

Keith Haring, a well-known graffiti artist, contributed to bringing graffiti to the commercial mainstream. In the 1980s, Haring opened his first Pop Shop: a store that offered everyone access to his works—which until then could only be found spray-painted on city walls. Pop Shop offered commodities like bags and T-shirts. Haring explained that, “The Pop Shop makes my work accessible. It’s about participation on a big level, the point was that we didn’t want to produce things that would cheapen the art. In other words, this was still art as statement”. Marc Ecko, an urban clothing designer, has been an advocate of graffiti as an art form during this period, stating that “Graffiti is without question the most powerful art movement in recent history and has been a driving inspiration throughout my career.”

But perhaps the greatest example of graffiti artists infiltrating mainstream pop culture is by the French crew, 123Klan. 123Klan founded as a graffiti crew in 1989 by Scien and Klor, have gradually turned their hands to illustration and design while still maintaining their graffiti practice and style. In doing so they have designed and produced, logos and illustrations, shoes, and fashion for numerous global firms.

Music:
In 1979, graffiti artist Lee Quinones and Fab 5 Freddy were given a gallery opening in Rome by art dealer Claudio Bruni. For many outside of New York, it was their first encounter with their art form. Fab 5 Freddy’s friendship with Debbie Harry influenced Blondie’s single “Rapture” (Chrysalis, 1981), the video of which featured Jean-Michel Basquiat, and offered many their first glimpse of a depiction of elements of graffiti in hip hop culture. JaJaJa toured Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and Holland with a large graffiti canvas as a backdrop. Charlie Ahearn’s independently released fiction film Wild Style (Wild Style, 1983), the early PBS documentary Style Wars (1983), hit songs such as “The Message” and “Planet Rock” and their accompanying music videos (both 1982) contributed to a growing interest outside New York in all aspects of hip hop.

Style Wars depicted not only famous graffiti artists such as Skeme, Dondi, MinOne, and ZEPHYR, but also reinforced graffiti’s role within New York’s emerging hip-hop culture by incorporating famous early break-dancing groups such as Rock Steady Crew into the film and featuring rap in the soundtrack. Although many officers of the New York City Police Department found this film to be controversial, Style Wars is still recognized as the most prolific film representation of what was going on within the young hip hop culture of the early 1980s. Fab 5 Freddy and Futura 2000 took hip hop graffiti to Paris and London as part of the New York City Rap Tour in 1983. Hollywood also paid attention, consulting writers such as PHASE 2 as it depicted the culture and gave it international exposure in movies such as Beat Street (Orion, 1984).

Tourism:
Most of the major cities across the world have graffiti and street art tours, often run by local graffiti artists who want to bring their talent to the public on a more socially accepted level.

Originally started with walking or biking tours around the cities, street art tours have expanded to include graffiti workshops, using graffiti art tools, stencils and spray cans.

Tours exist in New York, London, Berlin, Hamburg, Reykjavik, Barcelona, Montreal and Paris.

Gamer:
Graffiti has become an important part of video game culture, often reflecting the oppression facing graffiti artists in public and battle for it to be seen by the establishment as a legitimate and indeed a legal art form. The Jet Set Radio series (2000–2003) tells the story of a group of teens fighting the oppression of a totalitarian police force that attempts to limit the graffiti artists’ freedom of speech and others such as Rakugaki Ōkoku series (2003–2005) for Sony’s PlayStation 2 revolves around an anonymous hero and his magically imbued-with-life graffiti creations as they struggle against an evil king who only allows art to be produced which can benefit him. Similarly Marc Eckō’s Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure (2006), features a story line involving training in graffiti artistry and fighting against a corrupt city and its oppression of free speech, as in the Jet Set Radio series. Numerous other non-graffiti-centric video games allow the player to produce graffiti, such as the Half-Life series, the Tony Hawk’s series, The Urbz: Sims in the City, Rolling and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Along with the commercial growth has come the rise of video games also depicting graffiti, usually in a positive aspect – for example, the Jet Set Radio series (2000–2003) tells the story of a group of teens fighting the oppression of a totalitarian police force that attempts to limit the graffiti artists’ freedom of speech. In plotlines mirroring the negative reaction of non-commercial artists to the commercialization of the art form by companies such as IBM (and, later, Sony itself) the Rakugaki Ōkoku series (2003–2005) for Sony’s PlayStation 2 revolves around an anonymous hero and his magically imbued-with-life graffiti creations as they struggle against an evil king who only allows art to be produced which can benefit him. Following the original roots of modern graffiti as a political force came another game title, Marc Eckō’s Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure (2006), featuring a story line involving fighting against a corrupt city and its oppression of free speech, as in the Jet Set Radio series.

Other games which feature graffiti include Bomb the World (2004), an online graffiti simulation created by graffiti artist Klark Kent where users can paint trains virtually at 20 locations worldwide, and Super Mario Sunshine (2002), in which the hero, Mario must clean the city of graffiti left by the villain, Bowser Jr. in a plotline which evokes the successes of the Anti-Graffiti Task Force of New York’s Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (a manifestation of the “broken window theory”) or those of the “Graffiti Blasters” of Chicago’s Mayor Richard M. Daley.

Numerous other non-graffiti-centric video games allow the player to produce graffiti (such as the Half-Life series, the Tony Hawk’s series, The Urbz: Sims in the City, Rolling, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas). Counter-Strike, which is a Half-Life mod, allows users to create their own graffiti tags to use in the game. Many other titles contain in-game depictions of graffiti, including The Darkness, Double Dragon 3: The Rosetta Stone, NetHack, Samurai Champloo: Sidetracked, The World Ends with You, The Warriors, Just Cause, Portal, and various examples of Virtual Graffiti. There also exist games where the term “graffiti” is used as a synonym for “drawing” (such as Yahoo! Graffiti, Graffiti, etc.).

Commercial graffiti is used as a type of marketing known as guerrilla marketing where one company has limited funds for advertising its product may it be goods or services. Generally done by smaller companies at the beginning due to small budgets but adopted by big brands (e.g. Coca-Cola). This type of marketing has a way of going viral as it is done in a public place with limited resources but with new technology such as smart phones which can upload pictures and videos instantly to social media, so if there is legal permission by the government for graffiti people would do it during peak hours in communities for maximum exposure.