Dead Guerillas

Here is a bunch of very good guerilla ads.

But do you, like me, tend to harbour a degree of doubt for these little confections?

It’s a shame, but a category that was set up in all fairness to reward a funky new(ish) form of advertising has now been abused like a catholic choirboy. I just end up looking for the Photoshopping clues or the myriad reasons why a tiny brand would never fork out hundreds of thousands for an ad that only 300 people would see.

Which is a shame, because there have been some truly excellent examples of the genre (read into this what you will, but many of them happened before you could win a Pencil for ‘Ambient’). But then every category becomes subject to award-blag abuse: two minute director’s cuts of cinema ads that ran once; press ads that appeared in a school concert programme; posters that were flyposted rather than paid for; DM sent to three people…

First, the great idea. Then the awards for the great idea. Then the abuse of the awards for the great idea.

*sigh*