Ad students clever ploy for free media: a demonstration

With all the ad creep going on, it was bound to happen, the next generation of ad men and women are outdoing themselves in order to get attention.

Resume reports that students from Stockholms school of advertising Bergs have 'invented' a new free media for advertising - the legal right to demonstrate. Calling themselves the "Berghs Embassy of Communication" they applied for the right to demonstrate and then pranced around Stockholm - with a police escort - to holler "No mess, Svea Kebab" and "we only sell what we eat - Svea Kebab!"

The police stopped traffic on several major roads in Stockholm, Sveavägen, Hamngatan and Kungsgatan, just to let the "demonstrators" through.

Svea Kebab's owner Mustafa Bakirdan is of course very pleased with the attention they got.

Ten odd years ago, Berghs students were already quite pre-occupied with the signal to noise ratio in media, and that year the graduating class spent countless coins on a massive advertising campaign which sent out noise to cut through the noise.

In the middle of ad breaks there was suddenly a ten second yellow splat and static, on posters around town there was poster sites simply painted that same yellow. This teaser campaign seemed to be everywhere and I soon lost interest but I think when the payoff finally came up it mumbled something about "cutting through the media noise" or words to that effect.

Dave Trott used to call that sort of massive ad-buy for: "I don't have a good idea so why don't you give me 30 million bucks."

Seems this years Berghs students have finally figured out how to do it all on someone else bill - the taxpayers. I wonder how those stuck in traffic due to the blocked streets feel about Svea Kebab today. Will the students do any follow-up research on the "campaign"?

Isn't it odd that the right to demonstrate in Sweden allows for commercial speech?