The Bubble Project
I have been following the bubble project for sometime now. Why? Because it makes me laugh … out loud.
No really, what’s the bubble project you ask? Wikipedia defines it:
The Bubble Project, as proclaimed by its manifesto, aims to counterattack the one-sided corporate onslaught of marketing and advertisement messages which propagate public space. The project was conceived by an artist and art director Ji Lee who originally printed 15,000 stickers that look like speech bubbles used in comic strips. He posts these blank speech bubbles on top of advertisements throughout New York City allowing anyone who sees them to write in their comments and thoughts. By filling in the bubbles people engage in the project and transform “the corporate monologue into an open dialogue”. After time passes, the comments are photographed and posted on the project’s website.
Cool idea and dead simple. I had the chance to hear Ji Lee speak about his project at the Gain: Business and Design Conference. As you can imagine many marketers and advertisers are not very happy with his little experiment. After all, this is vandalism ... right? However, some advertisers saw this as a great way for people to interact with their ads. It’s like some crazy version of an offline mashup meets consumer generated content. Not to mention the viral aspect of the project. Ji has also written a book, Talk Back: The Bubble Project. The book explains why he did this and what he learned.
Love it or hate it, this is just another great example of consumers taking control.
