Graffiti Advertising

Every day I notice some new graffiti has gone up on my apartment building and it is starting to get really annoying. These gangs are constantly trying to one up each other and keep making their names bigger and BIGGER. They've even gotten so brave as to spraypaint their mark on the side of someone's white van. It makes my apartment block look trashy, and now I'm beginning to fear going outside at night because there are so many gangs roaming around. I don't really know what I can do about the situation besides move. I've thought about writing my own message...something to the effect "Write here if you are an idiot" with an arrow pointing down at the name.

While I detest the people who have nothing better to do than write on my apartment, I am intrigued by this form of advertising. How could you use graffiti advertising effectively?

The following is an article I found off the Marketing Minefield website.
http://www.marketingminefield.co.uk/unusual-ideas/graffiti-advertising.html

What is graffiti advertising?
Graffiti advertising is usually dismissed as an illegal form of guerrilla marketing. However, this need not be the case. Legal graffiti advertising is unique, eye-catching, and can be an excellent way of enabling your outdoor advertising campaign to connect with your audience.
Graffiti advertising is images and artwork placed on leased wall or billboard space.

How does it work?
Legal graffiti advertising works through leasing wall space and integrating the company logo and brand message or image into images from the graffiti artist. Although the wall space is leased in a similar way to billboard advertising, the differences are substantial:
Skilled graffiti artists create the ads
The ads are spray-painted onto the advertising space
Graffiti advertising venues often evolve into venues for events

Who’s it best for?
Two product categories that frequently use graffiti marketing are consumer products and entertainment, in particular those targeted at a youthful market.

Typically graffiti marketing will also be used when there is some kind of connection between the product being promoted and graffiti culture in general. This form of advertising can then be used to bring the two together, and can be especially effective when local graffiti artists are invited to create the advertisements.

Graffiti advertising is often considered to be extremely cheap but this isn’t actually the case. Legal graffiti advertising involves leasing advertising space which can cost thousands of pounds, as well as creating awareness amongst graffiti artists and organising any complementary events.
As for accountability, this is vital for any form of advertising these days and graffiti advertising is no different. As Adam Salacuse, CEO of Alt Terrain, says:

"You can use street traffic. However, you also want to measure the engagement factor. How many saw the mural being created. How long they were hanging out. If done right, there is also a word of mouth factor."