The above photograph was uploaded to a Google Maps server in June 2009.
The below photograph was taken last month and shows the same parking lot but instead of different advertisers on the billboard and mural, Molson M blends digital art with traditional advertising. You will also notice a block of small print toward the bottom.
Designed by Finnish illustrator Kustaa Saksi and painted by Canadian street artist Patrick Thompson, beer company Molson M commissioned the artwork near the Toronto intersection of Church and King Streets to complement its social media campaign, “Paint With A Tweet.”
Back in April 2012, I stumbled onto a news article about Molson M and how they wanted people to tweet with the #MolsonM_Art hashtag. Every Twitter user who included that hashtag was automatically added to the mural as a digital signature; and the company promised to donate $1 a tweet to the Canadian Art Foundation.
After 30 days, MolsonM monitored 10,000 hashtagged tweets and presented the art foundation with a $20,000 check.
Everyone won.
If you look very closely at the small print, you will see my name. Please thank @BelindaLoveLee for handwriting my name onto the mural. It took her three weeks to write everyone’s name.
About Ari Herzog
Wow – Excellent and very creative. Hopefully one of these day’s Google maps will be updated regularly (With the launch of their DIY-Map maker for the average person to add and update Google maps) so as we can all stay up to date with such creative advertisements. Excellent idea for marketing – Traditional, yet still in a digital trend.
That is a lot of names! I didn’t hear anything about this but it sounds pretty awesome. Like you said, everybody wins.