Guerilla Gardening

Antonio Lopez

In a strange intersection between gardening and marketing, recently Adidas created a little action movie about rebel urban farmers with GPS, night vision and an assortment of other TV crime show devices. The video is accompanied by quasi-seventies-era bongo suspense music and Friends-like TV camaraderie.

The thing is, gardens take nurturing, building and developing their niches, in other words, an ecological context. Could this also be a metaphor for marketing? Perhaps a more grassroots solution to both media and ecology would be to start a community garden. Maybe Adidas could put some money where their ad budget is and donate some profits to get a few going. Hopefully once they plant a few of these beautiful set pieces, someone will at least water them!

Will people be inspired by the idea or will they see through Adidas' ploy as yet another tactic to equate fashion with revolution? Just to prove once again that nothing about marketing is black or white anymore, the upside is that someone will be influenced by the ad to learn about guerrilla gardening. If you are one of those people, here's a link to a nonpartison group, Guerilla Gardening, which may inspire you to do your own action (with or without corporate sponsorship).