Believe it or not, sometimes it’s okay to steal.
Specifically, it’s okay to steal artwork that’s part of an integrated Volkswagen Canada campaign by Toronto agency Red Urban Canada.
Outdoor pop-up galleries with a performance-art twist, the exhibits showcase limited edition framed photos that are meant to be nabbed by passersby. The artwork shows the light trails of the new 200-horsepower Jetta GL.
The galleries launched last week in 11 different locations in Toronto, and this week in Vancouver and Montreal (in eight locations per city). This first phase of the campaign is in market for two full weeks.
The idea for this part of the campaign, dubbed “The Great Volkswagen Art Heist,” stemmed from the existing GLI “Driving can be beautiful’ campaign. A 30-second TV commercial used motion and a long-exposure stills camera to capture the zooming vehicle’s light trails, and this unique filming technique inspired the idea for the Art Heist photos.
“Once we came up with the “Driving can be beautiful” concept for the TV spot and documentary, we knew we were creating art,” said Red Urban Canada president Steve Carli. “When we pulled stills from the shoot, they looked gorgeous and dramatic. They were more than ads – they were frameable pieces of art.”
The out-of-home idea came quickly. “We thought ‘Let’s put them up around the city and see what happens,’” said Carli. “Someone said ‘What if somebody steals them?’ and we were like ‘What if they steal them?’”
That led to the idea of incorporating Facebook and using the concept of ‘stealable’ art as a way to engage Volkswagen’s Canadian Facebook fan base – approximately 370,000 fans strong – with the brand in an unorthodox way.
But how did people know the art was there for the taking? “Part of the plan was we put them up in such a way that people would notice they were hanging as if they were art, but they were put up slightly askew or something would indicate that they weren’t permanent,” said Carli.
Five images are up for grabs throughout the galleries, and – as part of the cache of nabbing one of the limited-edition images – there are only 90 hand-numbered prints of each of them.
Small messages on the back of each photograph compliment the art crooks on their fine taste and direct them to Volkswagen Canada’s Facebook page to share their great taste with the world, as well as how they are displaying their new piece of art.
“Once it was on Facebook, people were interested in finding them and realized they were available for thieving,” said Carli. “They could have some fun with each other by saying ‘Hey, look what I got.’”
The first Facebook reply came within a couple of hours of the first gallery going up. Caroline Kilgour, account director at Red Urban, added that after one week in Toronto, 10 people messaged Volkswagen on Facebook and eight people on Twitter to confirm that they had nabbed one of the images. Some also posted photos of the art hanging in their home.
“Most were stolen within hours,” she said. The boards were replenished once the paintings were stolen, and Kilgour noticed that once one of the three paintings on display was taken, people were more inclined to take the remaining two.
A key factor in the success of this execution was picking the right spot to place the temporary galleries. “We wanted the photos to be things people might happen upon as they went from their home to work,” said Carli. “We wanted the kind of thing were you look out of the corner of your eye and think ‘What’s that doing there?’”
Rather than obvious spots like major intersections, they went with a more subtle choice: the boards surrounding construction sites. While there was some concern that Canadians (a stereotypically mild mannered bunch) would be too timid to steal, Carli said some people were bold. One man even quickly walked up and took all three of the photos on display.
The second phase of the Art Heist rolls out next week in the same three cities and will rely more heavily on an online and social media component. “We’re trying to see if we can do something to get a lot more people involved in it and perhaps do something that extends a bit further,” said Carli.
“We’ll be hiding the frames in a more guerrilla-type manner,” said Kilgour. This time around, the photos will be hung, stashed or propped against something – minus a media buy. Clues will be released on Facebook and Twitter with an image of an intersection where the paintings can be found.
Summing up the goal of these galleries, Carli said, “We know we have a brand that people are really passionate about and we look for opportunities – sometimes it’s not directly related to a sale today or a sale tomorrow – to continue to deepen that relationship with the brand.”
