Wild Posting 101
- Cody Coyote
- Feb 19, 2019
- 2 min read
Updated: Oct 19, 2022
Wild Posting or Fly Posting is a guerilla marketing technique where advertisements are plastered all over signs, walls, buildings and fences in high density urban areas..
You may be familiar with this if you’ve ever seen missing cat posters stapled to phone poles or posters with phone numbers in tabs you can rip off and take with you. A modern twist on wild posting includes using graffiti to build brand awareness.
One of the guys from Shark Tank Daymond John did something similar when he was first starting his company FUBU. For part of his initial marketing push, he asked a bunch of small business owners if he could graffiti an ad on their security gates that would be pulled down when the store closed.
Unfortunately for us marketers, it isn’t exactly legal for us to go stapling and spray-painting ads wherever we please. In fact, IBM once got a $100,000 fine from the city of San Francisco for spray painting their logo all over the city.
There’s almost nowhere a person can go that doesn’t have some law against graffiti and vandalism. But if an agreement where to be made with a property owner to rent space on a wall or something then you can wild post that wall to your heart's content.
There are definitely advantages to wild posting. It's usually cheaper than buying ad placements elsewhere, it gets attention being as unconventional as it is, and if you’re doing it legally you have a connection with a local business that could bring future opportunities.
Maybe the most important thing to consider is the actual area you do your wild posting in. It works best in areas with high foot traffic and a culture that can appreciate the artistic aspect of the posting. You would be more successful running some graffiti wild postings in urban areas with a younger population than you would in a town known for people retiring to.
