Comments on: Guerilla Gardening with Adidas http://www.everyjoe.com/articles/guerilla-gardening-with-adidas/ Sports News - Tech Reviews - Entertainment - Life Tips for EveryJoe Fri, 04 Dec 2009 22:36:10 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Garçon aka Martin Kopta » Blog Archive » links for 2008-06-15 http://www.everyjoe.com/articles/guerilla-gardening-with-adidas/comment-page-1/#comment-318771 Garçon aka Martin Kopta » Blog Archive » links for 2008-06-15 Sun, 15 Jun 2008 23:31:32 +0000 http://www.behindthebuzz.com/guerilla-gardening-with-adidas/#comment-318771 [...] Guerilla Gardening with Adidas (tags: adidas video advertising) [...] [...] Guerilla Gardening with Adidas (tags: adidas video advertising) [...]

]]> By: Richard Reynolds http://www.everyjoe.com/articles/guerilla-gardening-with-adidas/comment-page-1/#comment-318574 Richard Reynolds Sat, 10 May 2008 08:44:56 +0000 http://www.behindthebuzz.com/guerilla-gardening-with-adidas/#comment-318574 Adidas’s ‘guerrilla gardening’ campaign is a superficial exploitation and appropriation of the movement which I really hope doesn’t confuse people about what it takes to genuinely guerrilla garden. I say this because last September their UK agency sent me an 8 page story-boarded script for a ‘documentary’ stuffed full of images lifted from my website and requested I help them cast under 25s in this film. It was a load of glossy fakery and I said “NO WAY”. They pressed on anyway and the results are now in cinemas all over the place. Look closely though, not only are they all wearing Adidas, but they’ve magically planted full grown sunflowers and fruiting trees and stuffed everything together as if it was a flower arrangement in a Hello home. This is horticultural nonsense, it's guerrilla gardening as a makeover TV show … and it's quite likely the plants are plastic. Yes plastic, despite the shoes they're meant to be selling being “low on plastic”. I'm suspicious because they've planted plastic elsewhere in this campaign. The giant Adidas shoe on a billboard in Old Street over the last few weeks, which was described as guerrilla gardening, was in fact made almost entirely of plastic plants! The only real stuff was some lichen which they’d spray painted blue (just to make sure it was dead I suppose). As for guerrilla, well when did paying thousands of pounds for ad space be guerrilla gardening or even guerrilla marketing?! By incredible coincidence I have a book out right now called ON GUERRILLA GARDENING, so fortunately my activity and my book is getting a bit more publicity in the UK than Adidas’s confused Grun stuff. And I hope my coverage about guerrilla gardening clarifies what Adidas are not conveying in their tokenistic campaign. There is one good part of their campaign, which very few will see or know about. Adidas are giving away seeds in their shops. Go in and help yourself to the bags and bags of the stuff. I think the ones I got are Hollyhocks. It’s a lovely idea and they should have made a cinema ad about that rather than a silly fake documentary… but let’s hope they’re not GM bred to grow into giant Adidas logos! If you want to read the 8 page dirge Adidas's agency sent me for the fake documentary you can download it from my website here: http://www.guerrillagardening.org/media/adidas_fake_doc.pdf Adidas’s ‘guerrilla gardening’ campaign is a superficial exploitation and appropriation of the movement which I really hope doesn’t confuse people about what it takes to genuinely guerrilla garden. I say this because last September their UK agency sent me an 8 page story-boarded script for a ‘documentary’ stuffed full of images lifted from my website and requested I help them cast under 25s in this film. It was a load of glossy fakery and I said “NO WAY”. They pressed on anyway and the results are now in cinemas all over the place. Look closely though, not only are they all wearing Adidas, but they’ve magically planted full grown sunflowers and fruiting trees and stuffed everything together as if it was a flower arrangement in a Hello home. This is horticultural nonsense, it’s guerrilla gardening as a makeover TV show … and it’s quite likely the plants are plastic. Yes plastic, despite the shoes they’re meant to be selling being “low on plastic”. I’m suspicious because they’ve planted plastic elsewhere in this campaign. The giant Adidas shoe on a billboard in Old Street over the last few weeks, which was described as guerrilla gardening, was in fact made almost entirely of plastic plants! The only real stuff was some lichen which they’d spray painted blue (just to make sure it was dead I suppose). As for guerrilla, well when did paying thousands of pounds for ad space be guerrilla gardening or even guerrilla marketing?!

By incredible coincidence I have a book out right now called ON GUERRILLA GARDENING, so fortunately my activity and my book is getting a bit more publicity in the UK than Adidas’s confused Grun stuff. And I hope my coverage about guerrilla gardening clarifies what Adidas are not conveying in their tokenistic campaign. There is one good part of their campaign, which very few will see or know about. Adidas are giving away seeds in their shops. Go in and help yourself to the bags and bags of the stuff. I think the ones I got are Hollyhocks. It’s a lovely idea and they should have made a cinema ad about that rather than a silly fake documentary… but let’s hope they’re not GM bred to grow into giant Adidas logos!

If you want to read the 8 page dirge Adidas’s agency sent me for the fake documentary you can download it from my website here:
http://www.guerrillagardening.org/media/adidas_fake_doc.pdf

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