August 16, 2006

Fence Your Farm: Jordan’s first Guerrilla marketing campaign

Chances are that you have already spotted at least 3 to 4 of the intrusive “لتشيك مزارعكم” graffiti littered all over Amman and rumored to have even reached Irbid.

Every single person I asked if he/she knew someone who could basically “fence my farm” failed not to refer me to a number they think they saw scribbled somewhere near! Think of repetitive subliminal message engraving.

Brand recognition is not a hard Endeavour after all, I feel sorry for the millions corporates burn on selecting a brand name, designing a logo & toning a funny/catchy colour scheme –think Umniah- while all it take is a dozen of black spray paints, cheap labor or a bunch of enthusiastically bored kids, a subtle disobey of the law and disregard to public taste.

I doubt that the service is in great demand, as I can hardly imagine many owning farms in the first place for them to need to "fence"! At least not in Amman and its urban areas, but now you know that whenever you fancy fencing your farm or garden, you have a number handy scribbled at a nearby wall.

What is more interesting is that now there seem to be even copycats to the original idea! I wish this doesn’t spark a heated competition, or otherwise we’ll end up with even more urban distortion from such nuisance.

Below is a snippets of the graffitis I managed to capture with my camera, if you spotted more of these, please send them to me with a tag of its locatoin at basem dot aggad at gmail dot com and I’ll keep adding them up here, perhaps we can document this "phenomena".



Dahyit Al-Hussien



Jubaiha



Dheir Ghbar



Rabyih



Al-Bayadir COPYCAT



Rabyih



Tla' Al-Ali



Marj Al-Hamam

6 comments:

ABOUD said...

He is doing it by himself, it is the same handwriting !!!

Anonymous said...

Amazing Sheikh how u spotted those ads, actually i think they are put in a way not to be missed, i've been hit by them ever since the beginning of this summer season, as I guess every Jordanian citizen is,
Yesterday I spotted one opposite to Qadi Al Qudah Directorate off Gardent Street, I wish I shot a snap of it,
If i have the chance to get there and picture it i'll do that and post it to you

Nice thoughts as usual sheikna :)

Anonymous said...

you are right i noticed it also..but i think there is a funny vision for this ,they write it between homrs where there are no farms but the idea is citizens here are like chicken so we live in a big farm so no wonder why u see it every where Litashyiik Mazare3ikom ya Muwateenin!!

Anonymous said...

excellent observation. actually i seriously think we all need to contact the municipal authorities and report these people. it's amazing how lax the authorities are on this. imagine: vandalism with the phone number of the perpetrator! How convenient! I reblog this once my site is up again (fiber optic cable busted!).

Tamara said...

Basem - welcome back its been a while ...excellent observation. interesting that this is the only business that advertises this way, your nothing in the " fencing" world until you have a scribble of your own on a well located wall : )

Anonymous said...

Yeah i have also noticed it many a time, and I didn't notice any particulare pattern to the distribution of the Ads, they seem to be everywhere, Havn't seem them in Aqaba though, but thats natural cuase there are no farms in Aqaba but I do beleive i saw at least one in Bayder.

My theory is that whoever first did it was just an unempoyed guy looking for work and he thought up this idea and just did it, which is if you think about it, quite ingenious, all it costs is a spray paint bottle, and a bit of hardworking and sneaking around, and in exchange your get awesome publicity, and by expolting the curiousity factor and not leaveing no name or indication on his identity just intensifies the curiosity factor which in turn further helps his campaign. I wonder if he got any jobs though, we should totaly call him and ask him :)