IBM Battles Carbon with Removable Street Art

Of late, IBM's been trying to loosen its tie and go a little green. Its efforts so far have been earnest but self-conscious: potentially exciting work dampened by risk-aversion.

For its "Fight Carbon" campaign, IBM gets down with the street artists -- "vandalizing" public areas, then removing its work and leaving those spaces cleaner than when they left them.

In its younger years, IBM was clearly not the rebel in the 'hood.

The idea of the campaign was to clean up three public spaces with non-toxic solutions. After each was sanitized, a hooded street artist pasted subversive carbon-friendly messages onto the walls.

The images were taken down once the camera stopped rolling, which means IBM's depending entirely on photos, videos and the savvy of its PR firm to show off its covert exploits.

By Ogilvy/Paris, which also did the wheatpaste thing for Tom of Finland. (Only difference is, that effort survived long enough to be seen by human eyes.)