GoW graffiti campaign hits San Fran

by Ken Weeks on Oct 31st 2006 9:00PM

Loyal Xbox360fanboy reader Ali works next door to an advertising agency that handles things for Microsoft. Perhaps that has something to do with the suspicious (not to mention cool) Gears of War graffiti turning up around his block. This advertising is in the vein of the PSP graffiti campaign that got a lot of press a while back, and it makes sense given that locust are supposed to come up out of the ground. The familiar Gears logo is always accompanied by a cuddly phrase like "Humanity had a nice run." Ali snapped these pics (more after the jump) on his lunch time stroll through the streets of San Francisco, where we assume it's legal to spray paint skulls on the sidewalk. Either way, it has to be confusing for non-gamers, who undoubtedly think the stencils are part of some Rovian plot to contaminate the sewers. Have you checked the sidewalks in your town?

Tags: advertising, gears of war, GearsOfWar, gow, graffiti, underground, viral

Reader Comments (11)

that is the sweetest thing i've ever seen period.
"Humanity had a nice run."- that is Genius

that is cool

I like it. It's not so tastelessly obvious as Sony's advertising was. If you're not a gamer and you've never heard of Gears of War, these ads might just be some stencil graffiti about any current issue [global warming, terrorism, war, take your pick].

I'll assume that whichever ad agency Microsoft is using for these stencils actually took the time to get the city's approval for these ads and is using some kind of washable paint that will wash away within a few weeks' time. I don't think anyone would make the PSP ads' mistake after all the bad press they got for them!

Thats really cool...I wonder how (or IF) they got permission to do that

While I can't necessarily say why I feel this way, I find that those grafitti tags are a quite a bit more palatable than those annoying PSP "tags" that could be found around the Bay Area last year. Of course, I've since moved back to Dallas (unrelated... mostly ha) and unfortunately can't witness these first hand, so it's somewhat of a facile statement.

I wonder how many people these cryptic sentiments will rub the wrong way? It would seem quite obvious that its advertising a product to me even if I was unaware of what said product was, but I wonder if others will come to the same conclusion.

Remember the girls who set up the gold Mario bricks? I wonder if people will go crazy.

Where are the locations?

"I like the monster under your bed has a monster under it's bed."

All the lines are pretty classic besides "save an endangered species... you" sounds too familiar...