The brief and the wall
Creative, location, flight dates, and the sign status of the wall. This is where a legal problem gets caught, not after the scaffolding is up.
Hand painted advertising
Advertising
that is painted,
not printed
Painted wall campaigns for agencies, brands and media owners. We find the wall, clear the paperwork, paint the creative by hand and hand you the photography and footage.
Why paint it
The process
is the media
A printed wrap goes up in a day and looks like every other printed wrap.
A hand painted wall takes a crew days to make, and that is the point. People stop to watch it, post the half finished stages, and come back to see it done. The painting produces a run of content that a printed board never generates.
The finished wall then reads as something made for that corner, which is why painted campaigns carry a credibility printed media lost a long time ago, especially with audiences who tune out anything that looks like an ad.
The honest trade off: paint takes longer to install, costs more to produce, and cannot be swapped overnight. For a flight of a few days, print wins. For anything that wants to be remembered, paint does.
How a painted campaign runs
Six steps, and we can take all of them or just the ones you do not want to handle.
Wall sourcing
If you do not have a wall, we find one. Owner agreements, lease terms and the neighborhood that actually reaches your audience.
Rendering
Your creative rendered on a photograph of the real wall, adjusted for the surface and the sightlines, signed off by your creative lead.
Approvals
Sign permits, owner consent and building management. In Los Angeles a painted advertisement is a sign, not a mural, and it follows a different rulebook.
Painting
Days rather than hours, scheduled to your go live date, documented as it happens.
Reset
At the end of the flight the wall is repainted for the next campaign or returned to a neutral finish.
The rule that decides everything
Mural or sign?
In Los Angeles this is not a detail. It decides where your wall can legally go.
A painted wall that carries a commercial message is a sign, not a mural. An on-site sign advertises the business at that address and is allowed on most commercial buildings within area limits. An off-site sign advertises something not sold there, which is what a classic ad wall is.
The City of Los Angeles prohibits new off-site signs and supergraphics, a moratorium adopted in 2008, except where a specific plan, a sign district or a development agreement permits them. Sign districts exist in Hollywood, along Broadway downtown and along Figueroa near the Convention Center.
In practice that means a third party ad wall needs a location with established sign rights, which is exactly the kind of thing we settle before a media plan is built around an address. None of this is legal advice and we confirm the rules on every wall.
Have a campaign coming up?
Tell us the flight dates and the city. We will tell you what is possible and by when.