VCU news

It started with a common sight in New York City: rats. It led to a less common sight: tiny billboards tailored to them – courtesy of the creativity of five Virginia Commonwealth University Brandcenter students.

The Ads for Rats team found an audience well beyond the rodents, as the recent campaign – it was installed in February – attracted media and social media attention far and wide.

“It was an opportunity to be as professional and artful as possible with something completely absurd,” said Henry Coffey, one of the copywriters.

The team – Coffey and fellow copywriters Callum Leitenberg and Boyan Zlatarski, as well as strategist Emma Kerencheva and art director Alex Ward – are set to graduate from the VCU master’s program in May. That summer, as several members were visiting New York City, inspiration struck when they saw a rat dash into the hole of a tree.

Envisioning the rats as a large but overlooked consumer market, the team got to work, gathering information about the population and its behaviors and then developing ad concepts around 10 products and brands that could appeal to rats at real size. Example: One billboard, spotlighting office supply giant Staples, features a rat using a rubber band as part of a fitness regimen (“Putting the Work in Workouts” is the tagline.)

The other 13-inch billboards spotlight Calvin Klein, the musical “Cats,” Heelys, Kraft, Band-Aid (with a bandage as a sleep eye mask), the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Nerf, Samsung and Tech Deck.

“We wanted to match the tone in terms of how the copy sounds and also the look and feel of what those brands actually sound like,” Leitenberg said.

After narrowing down the products and copy for each brand, Ward designed the billboards, which the team assembled from online arts-and-crafts purchases. They’re both small and mighty: With weighted stands, the billboards were designed to withstand wind and potential knock-overs by pedestrians.

Once the billboards were ready, the Ads for Rats team drove to the Big Apple for what Coffey called a “three-day installation odyssey.”

It was a very organized venture, Zlatarski added. “We went to New York with a plan on a Google map, with strategic points where we had to go and set each billboard.”

Each was positioned in a location relevant to its brand and ad content, such as the MTA billboard at the mouth of the subway, Calvin Klein under its renowned Madison Avenue billboard and Tech Deck on a court that skaters frequent.

The billboards quickly captured attention.

“A lot of times the billboards found themselves in places with huge ad buys — around big millions of dollars being spent on media,” Zlatarski said. “And they were the thing that was getting noticed. They were the thing that was getting people to lean over, look, take a picture of.”

After three days, the Ads for Rats pack took down the billboards. In their place they left a replica billboard sticker with the campaign’s social media handle.

While the billboard installations were temporary, the impact for the Ads for Rats team was not. With both pedestrian and brand media attention, the team hopes to make more permanent billboard fixtures in the city as it works with production partners in the coming year.