12/10/2026
Last year in Puerto Vallarta I stood in front of a wall of skeletons having the best bluddy beach day of their afterlife, under a banner that said “Sonríe, estás en Vallarta” (smile, you’re in Vallarta). Bright sunset, cobbled street, a skeleton taking a selfie, so initially I didn't even notice the wooden door which was bang smack in the middle of that fabulous street art mural ... covered in sh*tty tags.
Fast forward to Paris a couple of months ago and I couldn’t stop looking UP, I was just so freakin' astounded at how HIGH the graffiti goes ... and how they're not getting rid of it! So of course I had to do some digging (once a journo, always a journo 😝).
It turns out, Paris cleaning crews scrub about 650 sqm of tags every single day, which costs over 6 million euros a year, so the investment into the cleaning up of tags is massive. BUT the clean up crews are only allowed to clean up to 4m. Anything higher is the building owner’s problem, which is why so much of it sits untouched up near the rooflines. And some of those buildings are HUGE and most of those buildings are hundreds of years old ... they're works of art in themselves, so why would the taggers want to mess up such gorgeous historic ART? Awful 😣
What really stuck with me from Mexico is what we were told they do with the young graffiti-ers. When they catch kids tagging, instead of locking them up, they put them into an art program, then give them a wall of their own. That urge that gets people tagging in the first place - the urge to be seen or recognised for their bravery (when they've tagged in dangerous places), is given some skill behind it and a place to put it.
I think about that a lot in marketing. Plenty of us are tagging every wall in reach... every platform, every day, every hour... and still wondering why our engagement is sh*te and our reach is dismal. The people who get noticed found their wall, got good at their message, and kept showing up in the same spot.
BUT even the best mural needs people walking past it.
That’s where our Smart Ads Visibility System (aka SAVS) comes in. Your organic content is the wall. The system puts it in front of new audiences, warms them up with multiple types and styles of fresh content, then retargets the people who showed interest at 30, 60 and 90 days and those who visited your website ... that's visibility happening on repeat!
So how many walls are you tagging right now, and is anyone walking past?
Type SAVS below and we’ll tell you all about it 👇
Image ID:
1. A bright mural of skeletons relaxing on a beach under a pink and orange sunset, with a banner reading “Sonríe, estás en Vallarta”. A wooden door in the middle of the mural is covered in graffiti tags.
2. A wider view of the same Puerto Vallarta mural on a cobbled street, with a blue car parked in front.
3. Paris rooftops under a blue sky, with graffiti painted high up on a chimney wall.
4. A Paris apartment building with graffiti near the roofline and tags on the ground floor beside a street lamp.
5. A busy Paris street under a cloudy sky, lined with tall buildings.
6. A Paris street corner with a Five Guys restaurant, and graffiti on the buildings high above it.
7. A cobbled street in Puerto Vallarta lined with parked cars, with a colourful mural at the top of a stairway in the distance.
8. A cobbled street in Puerto Vallarta with a vendor’s stall under a large umbrella, a red plastic chair and a pickup truck in front of a white building. The top of a colourful sunset mural shows above the roofline behind them.
9. An AI-generated mural of a smiling woman (Kylie, founder of Hello Media) with blonde hair and a black embroidered top, surrounded by hummingbirds, ferns and tropical flowers, painted on a concrete wall beside the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
