Street Marketing In New York

March 1, 2006 2:27 PM

Who puts up all those wheatpaste posters on the streets of NYC? Is it legal? Do they have permits? Can anyone do it?
posted by jimmydare to Media & Arts (3 answers total)

Some are legal, some are illegal but the city mostly ignores it. Lots of them are just done by whoever. In the business, this is called either 'sniping' or 'wildposting'. Generally, the ones you see for big companies like American Express are done legally, by companies like NPA, who lease space on those plywood walls that they put up around construction sites from construction companies. This isn't always true, though. Microsoft got in trouble for illegal sniping during their MSN campaign (remember those butterflies on the subway signs?)

Also, the people that make a business of this are fiercely territorial, so if you go and wheatpaste over a bunch of NPA's posters, within a couple days, their checkers will generally find out and get someone to repaste over your posters. This is why NPA costs so much money. They have a staff that goes around and photographs all the posters every so often and sends the proof to the clients. Generally, the risk in doing this is less in getting fined by the city and more in getting poor results because without going out and reposting the posters all the time they'll get covered up pretty quickly (unless they are in crappy spots) by someone who is doing a better job.
posted by jeb at 2:44 PM on March 1, 2006

Also, the people that make a business of this are fiercely territorial--

And may give you a pasting, too, if you get caught on their turf. The same applies to flyposting in London.
posted by holgate at 4:14 PM on March 1, 2006

When I've done this in the past (for concerts and even protests in DC), it was quite clear that what we were doing was illegal and we stayed away from cops.
posted by OmieWise at 5:57 AM on March 2, 2006