The Graffter: out-of-home meets mobile.

By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative director, etc. / LMMiami.com

  • Last week I elaborated on the awkward way some people offer me money to plug their faux-news, products &/or services in my weekly op-ed.
  • I repeat: there are other legit ways to promote your wares properly, possibly with much better results & ROI than clumsy make-believe journalism.
  • Just call me and we’ll discuss.
  • As you can imagine, I also receive tons of press releases all the time.
  • Lots and lots.
  • In the majority of cases, said PR efforts are shotgun approaches blasted wholesale to every single publication in America and beyond.
  • No news new there.
  • Most go utterly ignored.
  • Once again: as you well know, this column is pretty much a hobby I keep on the side.
  • I hold a real job in an ad agency, without which I wouldn’t be able to pay the mortgage on my luxury abodes overlooking Biscayne Bay and the lease on my brand-new orange Lamborghini Aventador SV Roadster.
  • Every now and then, though, I land an exclusive, a real interesting scoop that has not yet been offered to, or received coverage from, other media outlets.
  • This is the case with The Graffter ( http://thegraffter.com/ )
  • I met its founder, Miguel Angel Orellana, out of sheer chance, through my wife who works at the Spanish Embassy’s trade office in Miami.
  • The Graffter is street art + out of home advertising + augmented reality + architecture + sightseeing + mobile marketing + social media + Pokemon go.
  • In fact, it was called The Graffter in the first place because the initial idea was to allow graffiti artists to express themselves “virtually” on the façades of building across the planet without actually having to deface them in real life.*
  • The potential for advertisers is enormous.
  • Various brands such as Coca-Cola European Partners and Telefónica de España are already experimenting with the technology.
  • All that’s needed is imagination and an open mind.
  • This is the future of out-of-home advertising.
  • Or so methinks.
  • Out-of-home that beams an individual, customized message on each and every impression.
  • I particularly liked Mr. Orellana’s story because he truly was ahead of the game.
  • He admittedly had a hard time finding backers for his start-up during its initial rounds of funding due to the fact that the concept & the technology were regarded as too new.
  • Until Pokémon Go came out and took the world by storm, proving that The Graffter’s augmented reality logic truly has huge potential.

Check it out for yourself, CLICK HERE.


*It is not the first or last time a start-up changes course from its original business plan. Snapchat was meant to be a sexting app yet it now is a media & life streaming platform. Twitter was supposed to be a micro network for micro blogging among small circles of friends, acquaintances or like-minded folks, yet with time it became the megaphone of choice for political strongmen such as Hugo Chávez, Rafael Correa or Donald Trump  to vent their mental flatulence.

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