Marketing in NYC? Try Wild Posting

Remember the last time you rerouted your step on an NYC street because the sidewalk was scaffolded for work? Perhaps you turned your head to see a slew of stacked or staggered posters advertising a show or a new product? That is the art and industry of wild posting. It is a grassroots style of marketing that has flourished for smaller events and businesses while also gathering the attention and budgeting of Fortune 500 companies, who are investing in wild post marketing throughout the streets of prominent cities like NYC.

In this fifth article of our six-part series on banners, poster printing, and large format printing for NYC events and marketing strategies, we’ll take you behind the scenes of wild posting and show you how to enliven unlikely spaces in NYC with dynamic, local messaging. Bestype produces wild posters with in-house technology and homegrown New York flare for both the corner shop and franchise clients. 

What is Wild Posting?

Specifically, it is when there is a static poster printed and posted several times in one location to draw maximum attention. Sometimes, the wild posting style can heighten engagement or rely on the power of repeated imagery for impact. 

With the trend of optimizing outdoor spaces for entertainment and marketing, wild posting is booming even as it keeps its edge a bit outside the norms of marketing. When you walk past the construction site and the poster-covered plywood — those are wild posters, holding the street aesthetic of graffiti culture. Wild posting often happens at night or on the weekends, pasting posters up simultaneously in multiple locations throughout a city, claiming spaces like barricades, fences, gates, and scaffolding for local displays of wild marketing.

How Do You Wild Post?

Some successful aspects of wild posting in NYC are a bold image and bare-bones advertisement to attract more interest, street credibility, and curiosity from your target audience. 

Poster printing is at the heart of wild posting and at the core of Bestype’s printing services. We easily color-match your imaging and print your posters in-house on our digital printers. The punch of the image, its color, and its rhythm in repetition will draw the attention you are seeking. Our in-house experts can solve color choices for prominence while maintaining brand accuracy, or meet message tonality for an event or launch. You can also schedule weekly ordering if you are planning a more extensive campaign.

Wild posters can come in many shapes and sizes; they are meant to match your tone and share your vibe with your target audience, so let your creativity help guide your decisions. We print wheatpaste posters, which are used in wild posting for easy application on cityscapes, transforming a street corner into an artful display. Since this style of poster printing aligns with a city’s culture, be sure to take note of areas that lend themselves to this brand of messaging. You can decide on how many locations to roll out for your guerilla marketing and when to schedule it for maximum impact; don’t forget to leverage it on your social media platform, bringing the art of your message to cities everywhere. Wild poster printing works in multiples for locations, applications, and opportunities. 

What to Expect? 

Although it is gaining increasing attention, wild posting marketing is neither new nor mainstream. It dates back to middle Europe’s 15th-century announcements and proclamations. In the late 1890s, instructions were posted to prevent damage in the applications of posters — a nod toward its temporary nature. For our modern wild posting in NYC, you can expect your message to stay up for approximately 3 – 5 days before it is taken down. While it is not illegal, it is still considered guerilla-style marketing; some cities and neighborhoods have embraced it as part of their poster printing culture more than others.

Wild posting is highly effective and economical. These posters can get the traffic of a magazine advertisement for a fraction of the cost — but location is everything, so be sure to map out highly trafficked areas of your demographic. The industries that tend to profit from wild posting marketing are many — from fashion, beauty, and food to pharmaceuticals, and even up-and-coming brands that know how to leverage frequency for their benefit. To gain maximum exposure, you will want to plan several blasts of wild posting throughout the timeline of your NYC marketing event, saturating your audience with anticipation and excitement. 

Contact Bestype

At Bestype, with a consultation, we can answer your preliminary questions about wild posters and help you envision a poster printing plan. We bring art and industry together for NYC. Contact us for a quote on your next printing project. In our upcoming article, we’ll share how to leverage step and repeat banners for events in NYC to make your moment memorable.