GUERRILLA MARKETING: Tagging Your Message

Wired has a story on Grafedia which is similar to the Yellow Ribbon Project we mentioned a while back. The idea is to extend the reach of the internet by bringing hypertags into the real world. Grafedia or something similar to the Yellow Ribbon would be a great campaign tool for a youth focused organization (Rock The Vote!!). Imagine a well branded visual sticker project (think Obey) that allows folks to claim a public space, communicate with each other and your organization, and build a networked street-level buzz around your campaign. Good stuff.

UPDATE: To see it in action I uploaded an image to the Grafedia network. Let's pretend you were walking down 125th Street and saw a "Hello My Name Is" sticker with "privatize@grafedia.net" in the white space. You would enter that email address into your cellphone and immediately be sent a copy of my rich media content. You can get the same response by sending an email to the privatize@grafedia.net address with your computer. Try it!

Today, companies with big advertising budgets are the main players in interactive media, engaging in activities like online ad campaigns or billboards encouraging some sort of viewer involvement. Geraci would like to change that.

"Grafedia is the option for the little guy to get involved in that dialogue," he said.

The little guy is definitely catching on. Since the project launched in late December, instances of grafedia have popped up stateside in places like New York City and San Francisco. Outside the United States, the project has gained fans in Brazil, France and England, Geraci said. So far, several hundred images have been uploaded to the grafedia server.

Anyone with the right tools -- a phone that supports picture messages and is under a T-Mobile, Verizon Communications or Cingular Wireless contract -- can view grafedia. You can also view it on a computer through an e-mail program.

Anyone can make grafedia, too. To do so, a user selects a rich media file (image, video or sound) and then chooses a word (say, "wirednews") to go along with that file. The user then uploads the file from a computer or sends it from a cell phone to, using this example, wirednews@grafedia.net. The user can then paint, draw or tattoo "wirednews" in public spaces in blue with an underline to identify it as grafedia. Viewers can interact with the grafedia by sending a message via their computer or certain cell phones addressed to "wirednews@grafedia.net" to get the content behind the link.

Geraci wants grafedia to make people think about the idea that the boundaries of the web are totally arbitrary. If you can put links in different places, he said, you're essentially extending the internet.

In this vein, in addition to general grafedia proliferation, he'd like to see large-scale examples, like multiple, related instances over several blocks or on an entire side of a building. [ Wired ]