Rumblefish, a Portland-based music licensing company, has partnered with billboard company Clear Channel in an effort to provide graffiti artists with legal canvases to create their aerosol art.
Rumblefish provides independent music for movies, commercials and video games as well as developing music marketing and branding campaigns. Its clients include Pabst Blue Ribbon, Adidas, Red Bull, 20th Century Fox, Weiden & Kennedy and EA Sports.
Launching in April, the "Not a Crime" campaign will feature billboard-sized pieces of art placed around Portland featuring local and nationally recognized graffiti artists. Each billboard will contain phrases that challenge the perceptions of graffiti artists and graffiti art in general such as: "Not a Gang Member, Not a Crime." There will also be a low-bandwidth radio broadcast from each billboard to educate interested parties on the campaign and the issue.
After recruiting six local graffiti artists to paint Rumblefish's downtown offices, Paul Anthony, chief executive and founder of Rumblefish, learned of the lack of legal outlets for these artists in Portland. (A photograph featuring floor murals at the Rumblefish office ran on the cover of the Feb. 27 issue of The Business Journal.)
Talking with many parties involved with the ongoing controversy, Anthony found that although there were many advocates, programs and funding sources for graffiti removal and abatement initiatives, there were few voices in the community that represented the interests of the artists.
"Jason Brown [owner of local clothing retailer, New American Casuals] met great opposition when challenging the city on the graffiti issue, so we decided to get a message to the people using a different tactic. Billboards are an effective way to get your point across, and Clear Channel has been extremely supportive of the campaign from the start," Anthony said in a prepared statement.
Clear Channel has fought its own battle with illegal graffiti; billboards that are tagged must be completely replaced and the company continues to work with the Anti-Graffiti Task Force to crack down on vandalism. Despite this negative experience with graffiti, Clear Channel offered to co-sponsor the program with Rumblefish by providing three billboards in downtown Portland for the first year of the campaign.
"What's most important to us is that we have the ability to provide a place for everyone, from advertisers to artists, to exercise their First Amendment rights. When Paul approached us with this concept we immediately recognized the value to the community in establishing a place for creative artists to express themselves in a way that would not infringe upon other business' basic rights -- and without the artists having to run the gauntlet of government selection or censorship," said Frank Podany, president of Clear Channel Outdoor, in a prepared statement.
Clear Channel Outdoor is part of the media company that recently purchased the billboard, radio and television interests of AK Media in Oregon and Washington.
More than a community art project, "Not A Crime" is designed to bridge the communication gap that exits between artists, business owners, the city and the public.
Contact Robin J. Moody at 503-219-3438 or rmoody@bizjournals.com.