Public Ad Campaign strikes again with a new advertising takeover. This one took over 106 bus shelter ads in Madrid. Artists around the world were asked to submit text for the billboards. The above photo shows text I personally submitted. It translates to: “advertisement for a bad movie.” Check out all the other photos and artists here.

Here’s the project summary:

MaSAT (Madrid Street Advertising Takeover) is the second international street ad takeover project, and the third in a series of civil disobedience projects intent on changing our expectations of public behavior in our shared environments. For this SAT project we targeted Cemusa bus shelters in 4 heavily populated locations around Madrid. This time, at the request of our Madrid based collaborators, participants were asked to submit only text based works. This fantastic idea allowed us to open up the submission request process to a wide range of individuals including sociologist, teachers, lawyers, gallery owners and anyone with a concern for the curation and participation in public space. Each of the 106 individuals were asked to submit one sentiment they wished to see exhibited on the streets. The result is a variety of unique visions of public dialogue and a glimpse at the possibilities available when we open up our public environment in a truly public way.

This made me laugh out loud today. Someone put googly eyes on all of the characters on the poster for the new movie Couple’s Retreat in the C/E subway station on 23rd (once home to a very fine art gallery!) The station continues to be a great place to spot hilarious stuff like this.

My first suspects are Googly Eye Cru and Katie Sokoler.

The first is a commercial for T-Mobile that aired on UK television. The second is a publicity stunt / viral video that was made to promote a Belgian reality TV show centered around a production of The Sound of Music.

The T-Mobile video came first; it was released in January. Of course there have been many flash mobs and Improv Everywhere-style events staged in London’s Liverpool Street Station, long before T-Mobile. The Belgian video was released in March, hot on the heels of T-Mobile’s success. The videos are pretty similar to each other, but what I found really hilarious was how brazenly the Belgian team ripped off the T-Mobile behind-the-scenes video. Check them out side-by-side:

Both videos are very well made and are no doubt entertaining. Of course it helps that they both had a big corporate budget and permits to use the train stations. Like I said, we weren’t going to post them since they are huge commercial ventures and not the work of the independent pranksters and artists we love to feature, but after getting 100 tips about them emailed to us, why the hell not.

Poster Boy continues to outdo himself. See if you can find the hidden smiley face.

More on Poster Boy.

This is either an awesome hack, or a very clever marketing campaign on the part of Dreamworks.

(sent in by Dan Berman.)