So, one night about a year ago some friends and I had this great idea to promote the Sister Anne cartoon. We were going to spoof Shepard Fairey…
Now most of you are asking yourselves WHO is Shepard Fairey, which is EXACTLY where this joke goes wrong! When I’m explaining it to somebody I start with “Obey the Giant”, the original street art that Fairey did back in the 80’s, then I explain how he was sued by WWF and Vince McMahon over the use of Andre the Giant’s likeness and the words “the Giant”.
Then I mention the incredibly successful clothing line he has out now. This usually engenders a blank stare and a perfunctory smile of complete incomprehension.
THEN I say “he’s the one that did the Hope poster of Obama”, at which point they generally go “Ohhh, yeah. I know that poster!” which, again, is why our “genius” viral marketing plan for promoting Sister Anne went nowhere. If you need to EXPLAIN the joke it doesn’t work.
Shepard Fairey is a personal art hero of mine. I have followed him enviously since art school. I love his style, his message and his execution. That’s why, when we came up with this idea over some wine one night, I thought it was hilarious. First we would make posters in the style of Shepard Fairey. Then we would put them up online. Then we would post all over the internet and send people to the download page and “encourage” them to put the poster up in huge poster walls and other creative ways and take picture of it and send them to us. Once people started sending us photos of their poster walls we would put them up online along with some joke ones. We were going to photoshop the poster on the wall between Israel and Palestine with a blurb about peace breaking out amidst mass confusion. We were going to fake a shot of the pope holding one up to promote it. We were going to photoshop one on George Clooney’s back. THEN once the viral campaign had reached a fever pitch we were going to pretend that Shepard Fairey was suing us. If you do know his work and career you’ll see the humor of this. For everyone else the reason this would be ironically hilarious is because he started his career being sued by Vince McMahon king of professional wrestling and has been in court pretty much continuously ever since. Most recently with the Associated Press over the image he used as the pose for the Hope poster, which they claim to own. I actually wanted to use this phase as an excuse to contact Shepard Fairey to see if he would be willing to play along and pretend he was pissed off at us.
I thought this was a great idea but a joke you need to explain doesn’t work, and an inside joke that a handful of people get doesn’t make for a viral promotional campaign that impacts popular culture in a meaningful way. That said, here is the poster:
And the link to the page where you can download it:
http://influence4.com/poster_download2.html
There is also the original joke post still up on the page. If you do decide to plaster them up all over your hometown (and of course I, as the management of this site, am in no way encouraging you to do so) please do send us pictures of your completely independent efforts.
THANKS!!
PS: here’s a link to Shepard Fairey’s site. It is WELL worth visiting, bookmarking, and returning to regularly. I love this guy!
