Guerilla Me

A story:

It started on Wednesday on my ride to work. A pair of guys with their faces painted blue got on the train talking loudly on their cellphones. At first, I thought it had something to do with the White Sox making it to the World Series, that these were some rabid fans who decided to paint themselves blue for some silly reason. Then I thought they were with Blue Man Group or some kind of performance art piece. I thought all of that until the guy standing in front of me said, "Oooooh...they're selling something for Cingular Wireless."

He was right. Their shirts said it, their bags said it. Logos on all of them and signs attached to their bags that said "Talk Until You're Blue in the Face." They were part of a "creative" advertising campaign for a Cingular Wireless calling plan. They left a stop later, and I spent the rest of the ride cursing them, if for no other reason than because they had ganked the basic form of the Pizza Box project to hock cellphone plans.

Yesterday it happened again and I decided to do something about it. I decided that the next time I saw them, I was going to yank the phone out of their hands and smash it on the ground. Or wait a stop and run off the train with it.

Then I decided, instead, to do something that wouldn't get me arrested. I decided to Pizza Box the advertisers.

Today, I met Joanna at the Fullerton stop before work. We pinned signs on our bags that said "Invasive Ads Make Me See Red" and kept them hidden until one of the blue-faced Cingular guys got on the train. Then she and I turned our bags around and put on red-framed glasses. I was wearing a red shirt. And we stood next to the guy with our signs facing the rest of the train and talked loudly on our cellphones about how much we hated invasive advertising and why.

It wasn't quite the army of guerilla theatre I had hoped for (I really hoped we could have guerillas in every car of the train, and I really hoped there would be more of the blue-faced guys today), but it was very effective. The best response was from the guy himself, who leaned over and said "bravo" just as he left the car.

If the ad campaign continues, I'm going to keep doing this and provide a PDF of the sign we used to anyone who wants to lay in wait for them for as long as they keep this up. If I have my way, the trains will be full of people ready to take out their cat-eye red glasses and let the rest of the car know how shitty invasive advertising is. Until Cingular pulls the ad.