If a corporate giant uses street graffiti to plug its products, does that make it edgy and hip – or simply arrogant and deceptive? The question is prompted by a growing trend in "guerrilla" marketing: with young, urban consumers proving ever more resistant to conventional advertising, companies with products to sell are seeking to distract them when they least expect it. Increasingly, that means hiring graffiti artists to work logos or "brand identities" into everyday public spaces. Yet what may sound like a fresh, counter-cultural idea is repeatedly turning around to bite a corporation’s street cred.

Take Sony’s recent licensed graffiti blitz to promote its portable PlayStation. Last November, stencilled designs began appearing on walls in North American cities depicting bug-eyed cartoon kids playing with the systems. There was no Sony logo, nor any text to indicate that the drawings were intended to push a gadget. Yet, as Sony’s marketers explained, the "artworks" were carefully positioned to raise awareness among the elusive "urban nomads, people who are on the go constantly".

Those urban nomads are unforgiving critics of contrived authenticity. Within days, Sony was being bombed with hostile reactions online and on its wall spaces. One image had the word "Fony" scribbled over it; another was defaced with the protest: "Stop hawking big business on our neighbourhood walls." Activists began affixing stickers stating: "Corporate vandals not welcome." The company even found itself facing political flak, with Philadelphia’s mayor demanding the drawings be removed from city buildings.

Perhaps Sony thought it was minimising its exposure by paying property owners for the use of their walls, but the backlash was prompted by cultural not legal considerations. As the Wooster Collective of street artists pointed out, Sony’s faux pas was to co-opt the ultimate grass-roots, anti-establishment art form to boost its "underground" credibility. That could only alienate the very "creative class" it was intending to influence.

Sony is not the only corporate-graffiti sponsor to find its image defaced. Boxfresh, the British "streetwear" retailer, found itself the target of a boycott campaign after its logo appeared across Central London alongside images depicting Mexico’s Zapatista rebels and Subcomandante Marcos’s phrase: "We are you." "No you’re not, you’re an overpriced shop trying to be subversive," one critic scribbled back. After leaflets accused the company of "trying to turn the Zapatistas’ struggles into a cheap advertising campaign", it agreed to make a donation to a Zapatista support group. More recently, Saatchi & Saatchi found itself condemned by locals for using a stencilled logo throughout East London to promote a Brazilian liquor. The logos were quickly mutilated, and internet discussion groups criticised the company for appropriating public spaces for cynically commercial ends.

Will that deter other graffiti marketers? Probably not, given that the controversy keeps their products talked about. Besides, the more entrepreneurial graffiti artists are realising that there is money to be made by pursuing the likes of Reebok and Virgin. A number are forming "artistic urban media" agencies with names such as Critical Massive. And with business rolling in, why should they care that on the streets they are being dissed as the "Hypocritical" Massive?

david.rowan@thetimes.co.uk

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