The Anti-Advertising Agency » prank

DOOM Display Billboards « Urban Prankster

Steve Lambert — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 06:43:18 +0000

If you were a video game geek in the early 1990’s, this is probably up your alley. A quartet of street artists named Mr. Talion, Epoxy, Baveaux, and Kone have added the heads-up display from the first-person shooter computer game DOOM to a number of billboards throughout Berlin. You can see more here.

via DOOM Display Billboards « Urban Prankster.

Free Billboard Lobbyist Sanitizer Now Available for All Members of Council (from illegalsigns.ca)

Steve Lambert — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 01:03:51 +0000

It is looking like City Council will debate the new signs by-law and billboard tax on Tuesday December 1.

According to the City’s Lobbyist Registry, billboard industry lobbyists have had over 80 closed door meetings with City Councillors in the past month alone.

As a result, IllegalSigns.ca has designed, manufactured and is now distributing these custom-made products to all members of City Council who are documented to have come into contact with a billboard industry lobbyist.

via » Free Billboard Lobbyist Sanitizer Now Available for All Members of Council ::: illegalsigns.

Paintballed Billboards

Steve Lambert — Tue, 19 May 2009 13:00:00 +0000

It’s a shame the billboards were blank…

Prague’s street art collective EPOS 257 recently converted some blank billboards into abstract art with the help of a few paintball guns. They write:

Shooting into the white surface of vacant billboards with a paintball gun – blank canvasses in an urban environment, a gesture expressing an opinion and at the same time abstract painting in a urban environmemt.

via urban prankster via wooster

DeBeers attempts sleazy take down of parody ad

Steve Lambert — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 14:58:44 +0000

As you probably heard, on November 12th a group of artists and activists unveiled a “Special Edition” of the New York Times dated “July 4th, 2009″ and outlining the end of the war in iraq, a national tax base for schools, and free public universities, among other things. In addition to the print paper, an online version has been posted at http://nytimes-se.com.

The South African Diamond conglomerate, DeBeers, has complained about the below ad (gif version) appearing on the nytimes-se.com website.

Certainly one wouldn’t expect DeBeers to be pleased; they’ve tried to separate themselves from the blood diamond problem for years (an angle the parody ad actually plays on).

However, the ad is, to quote the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Corynne McSherry “a clearly parodic ad on a clearly parodic website.” But in an attempt to sidestep the First Amendment and other legal protections for parody, DeBeers is trying to intimidate the domain name registrar into shutting down the nytimes-se.com domain name. It’s already a stretch, as DeBeers has no connection to the nytimes-se.com name, which may be why they didn’t use the standard protocol of the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy and went straight to bullying the registrar.

The nytimes-se.com domain has effectively been put at risk by DeBeers overreaching. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has stepped in and responded to DeBeers’ complaint, and informed the registrar of it’s rights. We’ll see what happens…

Steve Lambert at Versionfest 06

NY Times Prank

Steve Lambert — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 03:00:36 +0000

This is why we’ve been a bit quiet lately.

New York Times Special Edition Video News Release – Nov. 12, 2008 from H Schweppes on Vimeo.

Steve Lambert with Alan Abel and Ron English

Steve Lambert — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 03:48:05 +0000

I’ll be giving a short talk for part of Gelf Magazine’s Non-Motivational Speaker series. If you haven’t seen Abel Raises Cain, it’s great. And Ron English you’ve probably seen already. From Gelf’s site:

Culture jammers and pranksters will be this month’s topic. Featured speakers are Alan Abel, perhaps the most infamous prankster in American prank history, subject of the recent award-winning documentary, Abel Raises Cain, and “founder” of mock citizens’ groups The Society for the Indecency to Naked Animals and Citizens Against Breastfeeding; Steve Lambert, guerrilla artist, founder of The Anti-Advertising Agency, and Senior Fellow at cutting-edge arts organization Eyebeam NYC; and Ron English, patriarch of the agit-pop art movement, corporate branding subversive, and subject of the documentary “POPaganda: The Art and Crimes of Ron English.”

The event will start at 8 pm on April 24th at the Happy Ending Lounge, and is free.

Event Details:

Happy Ending Lounge (official site, CitySearch, MySpace)
302 Broome St.
(between Forsyth and Eldridge)
212-334-9676
J/M/Z/F to Delancey
B/D to Grand Street
Look for the hot-pink awning with the words “Health Club” on it.

Doors open at 7:30.
Readings start at 8 sharp.
FREE!

Facebook Business Solutions

Steve Lambert — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 21:38:55 +0000

Emily’s been working on a piece about Facebook’s creepy Beacon software (you probably heard about it in the news). But in the midst of the controversy Facebook has taken the marketing of social networking profiles to a whole new low with facebookbusinesssolutions.com. Did they think we wouldn’t notice?

It starts with Facebook Surf and goes downhill from there:

Facebook Surf Keep track of your potential customer base by closely monitoring the web pages they visit on a daily basis. Utilize this information by combining it with Facebook Social Ads to then market your product directly to specific users who may be interested.

What will it take for people to finally stand up and say enough? Perhaps Facebook Recycle:

Thanks to Dan Provost and friends at InternetFamo.us. P.S. We have bridges for sale.

Fake CEO Blogs

Steve Lambert — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 13:16:49 +0000

via Joey Skaggs’ The Art of the Prank:

Posted by harshavardhan on Thought Beans Blog, November 2, 2007:

The Fake CEO blogs, have become a big buzz in the blogosphere. Amongst the fake blogs, the Fake Steve blog is most popular.

It is written by Daniel Lyons, a senior Editor at Forbes Magazine. It took almost 14 months to find out the author of this Fakesteve Blog. Daniel writes the Technology articles for Forbes.

There are other fake CEO blogs:

Fake Richard Branson blog Fake Larry Ellison Fake Bill Fake Schwartz Fake Steve Ballmer Fake Steve Thanks David Strom. Photo image: TheAge.com.au.

World’s Smallest Advert Subvert

In the meantime, other things you can do with signs…

Steve Lambert — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 13:14:41 +0000

I’m behind on my editing duties after returning from Barcelona. There will be posts coming soon, but here’s something to hold you over…

thanks to Julia Schwadron for sending this my way.

Steve Lambert Speaking In Barcelona

World’s Smallest Advert Subvert

Steve Lambert — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 22:25:11 +0000

With a half-inch sticker you can do so much. Thanks to the anonymous author of this project that popped up on the internet in the past few days.