Pedestrians in select cities this summer got a taste of a peculiar sort of window shopping. For one, there was no shopping. Instead, behind the glass was a young man named Tully Wu-Shu, passed out on the floor and surrounded by clutter, from Chinese take-out to the Nike Prestos he kicked off before crashing out. A Web address on the window directed crowds of rapt gawkers to the Presto site. There viewers could click on items from the scene?a shoe, a camera, a parrot?and be treated to a nugget of Web candy that told the story of the featured athlete?s day. (The parrot, for example, chirps, gets big and cartoon-y, then launches a Hitchcock-ian Web movie.)

This scene, a.k.a. ?Crashout Window,? which lasted one week in August 2002, was a live mock-up of Wieden + Kennedy?s Presto print campaign. The window reflected the theme of the campaign: unconventional movement. But unlike most action-packed athletics wear ads, the scene showed the after-effects of a day of wild romping. The reversal seems fitting for a brand whose message is that a person can be irreverent and athletic, reaching all kinds of movers and shakers from skaters to dancers to the more ?traditional? sportsperson. ?If the product feels unconventional and irreverent and fun,? says W+K Art Director Danielle Flagg, who teamed up with Copywriter Mike Byrne for the campaign, ?we want the media and the expression of the idea to be just as unconventional.? That meant transforming urban landscapes into living, breathing ads.

The entire campaign included executions in print, TV, Web, DVD, and out of home. In reaching its target of the under-20 set, location, as ever, was key. In hip urban neighborhoods, W+K found unlikely ?nooks and crannies? that were ripe with potential. Thus, the side of a building became the agency?s canvass. Working with a company called NeverStop, whose consultants call themselves ?cultural engineers,? W+K conducted a series of ?stealth projections,? in which a van equipped with a rooftop projector parked and played short films on the side of a building. The films, which also aired as TV spots and as pre-trailer rolling stock in targeted movie theaters, featured Le Parkour, a French performance company whose acrobatic wall-scaling turns urban terrain into one vast jungle gym. Should some citizen object to the stealthwork, the ads?equipped with wheels as they were?could conveniently be packed up and driven away.

The intent was to keep things ?close to the street,? and to sell a state of mind as much as a product. ?Teens know when they?re being advertised to,? says Lynn Mayo, W+K Associate Media Director. ?Going in and plastering things everywhere is not the way to talk to them. You want to get into their world and be a part of their world, as opposed to shoving an ad down their throats.?

With its cut-through-the-clutter, ambush-the-consumer agenda, guerrilla as a category has been criticized for polluting the air with corporate noise. As a result, ambient media has tended to get louder in an effort drown out the din of competing media. Presto, however, got quiet. ?I think guerrilla was once ?guerrilla,?? says Flagg, ?and then it started to become a regular form of media. Wild postings are almost expected now. This wasn?t a showy thing. It wasn?t mass-market-y.?

To that end, Presto sticker books were distributed in underground retail stores, not Niketown or Nordstrom?s. DVDs, featuring visual artists? and musicians? impressions of unconventional movement, had only limited distribution at Presto ?influencer events.? Nike commissioned local artists in New York to provide their impressions of Presto in publicly-displayed visual art. And the stealth projections came and went?stealthily. Summing up the philosophy behind the campaign?s use of restraint, Mayo noted: ?Nowadays, it?s what you do, not how much you do.? Especially, it seems, if you do it in Prestos.
?T. Meyers