Lately there have been many discussions on graffiti, on who defines public space, on whether the people performing graffiti are artists or vandals.

I’m not the person to judge this, however I would like to share with you on this occasion a practice that Elais-Unilever has adopted on the empty walls of their own premises in Pireaus. The company had asked some years ago from an artist named Stelios Faitakis  to turn the blank walls outside their offices into an art statement.

Now this is an excellent practice! Beside the stunning visual/artistic result which you don’t have to be an art expert to perceive its quality, I like it also for several other business reasons:

• This is a marketing investment taken from a single year, which however bears advertising fruit for years after, since this “outdoor” stays intact and brings visibility of the brand to thousands of commuters in Pireos Street every day. Bold move from a marketer that did not look only for the ROI during that specific year but instead decided to nurture the Elais brand (which in turn nurtures him/her at the end of the day).
• The artists style (a fusion of iconography and modern graffiti) is very in line with the Elais brand (which is old, Greek, traditional and at the same time has state of the arts methods to refine extra virgin olive oil).
• The graffiti tells a story – the way every marketer should tell a story about the brand they serve. From left to right the images depicted on the walls narrate the story of olive oil, starting from Greek mythology, to the process of cropping the olives, the extraction of olive oil, the everyday moments of people in the olive producing terroirs, the occasions of consumption. Good storytelling is always relevant for consumers.

Check the whole graffiti via Google maps here.

What memory points will you generate today with regards to your brand that will stay beyond 2015?