How we pulled off the Banksy heist
In this guest post, Megan Aney and Maura Tuohy explain how their social media skills helped them gain the inside information they needed to win the challenge to Steal Banksy‘s art work No Ball Games.
A Sunday night business trip turned into espionage when we scoped out The Art Series Hotels campaign to ‘Steal a Banksy’.
Before we had even arrived at The Blackman we were tweeting @stealbanksy for clues on the painting’s hidden location.
The tweeter behind @stealbanksy gave us a cryptic clue to begin our heist.
Once we arrived at The Blackman we spotted the loot behind reception. Through dinner we strategised about slipping in and lifting the art, but realised the security was too tight.
With no plan in place we dragged our feet back to our room to continue work for our Monday morning strategy meeting. A few hours later, in need of a distraction, we headed down to reception to further scope the prize.
But it was nowhere to be seen.
We trawled every level to see if the painting had been relocated, peeking around every corner and army-rolling out of elevators.
To no avail – it must have been behind closed doors.
We began to hatch the heist. From our earlier tweet we realised the Banksy would be en route from the Blackman to The Olsen, a sister Art Series hotel – the only question was when.
That’s when the real work began. We dug into LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Google to source the names we would need to drop to impersonate an insider.
In the wee hours of the night we role played different scenarios to practice keeping cool to pull the wool over the eyes of the helpful, unknowing staff.
Early the next morning Maura headed down to reception posing as a PR lead from Naked Communications, the agency behind the activation, and Megan was on-call to corroborate nearly any story.
The next 20 minutes were a blur. The concierge, Rob, fired question after question, but Maura replayed the answers from the previous night’s rehearsal and he eventually took the bait.
Mid negotiation, Rob insisted he speak with the contact in charge of the campaign at the Olsen – and Megan played her role – explaining that there was a change in plan and that Maura was to leave with the painting.
At this point Rob agreed to walk the painting down to Maura’s car. The only issue – there was no getaway vehicle. As Maura pretended she forgot where the car was parked and wandered down the ramp looking for an exit, desperation descended.
Maura stopped at a random car – ready to admit defeat when she improvised: “We need packing materials for the painting. I can’t put it in the car like this, it will get scratched.”
The concierge handed over the painting and went off in search of the packing materials.
Heels off, and Banksy under arm, Maura made a run for it, and then calmly walked out of the front door with the painting.
It’s Gone! 2 #stealbanksy from Art Series Hotels on Vimeo.
We met across the street, shedding tears of excitement while Rob on looked with defeat, realising he had been had.
- Megan Aney is a Community Manager and Maura Tuohy is a social media strategist at Reprise Media
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Great work girls.
Nice campaign. Everyone seeks to create talkability with their campaigns. The trick: be remarkable and people remark. This premise of this campaign was remarkable. Kudos Naked.
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Naaaailed it
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Nice work.
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Really great blag guys, very impressive. This will put Level 2’s wannabe street art to shame! 🙂
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What a load of rubbish. Medialand will hear about this. General public will not(.)
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Well done guys!
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One down and one to go.
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And can everyone plleeeeaaaasssee go and book lots of rooms with this hotel as otherwise this will look like a big waste of money. It is vital the advertising and media world do this as this is where 99% of all the exposure related to this campaign has occurred.
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Brilliant work girls!!
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Brilliant campaign and even better heist. Great work
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To clarify. Great work in successfully nicking it.
Agree with others that it may not have the broader impact on those it intends to.
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if it gets media coverage then its done its job as bookings will no doubt follow
good work ladies
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Fantastic! Love this campaign.
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SUBTEXT: Ad company starts campaign of interest to ad company people, some of whom, in a rival agency, complete the competition successfully and early and report the story in an ad industry resource.
How is this not wanking in the mirror?
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To be fair, whenever we’re in Melbourne on business, we usually book the Blackman anyway, it’s a good hotel!
Top work, ladies – I knew it would be something like that. PR person from agency successfully acts as PR person from agency. Yeah.
What’s happening to the painting then?
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Love the story, that’s one for the grandchildren.
Not loving the negativity. I’m pretty sure Naked have had the foresight to amplify this to a wider audience. Just how that will be done, is probably yet to be revealed.
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Cool, calm and collected under pressure – good work ladies!
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Great work! Where’s it hanging now?!
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well done gals
and especially well done for hijacking Naked’s PR efforts
you’re famous in this incestuous little industry
(but like the NAB brand campaign, there’s precious little business benefit. Hopefully, unlike NAB which is now viewed as a lying hypocrite, the ArtSeries brand won’t be permanently damaged)
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Smart idea, but I never saw any mainstream media coverage, so it couldn’t have been too much of a success.
I guess the proof will come 3 months later when the hotel looks at its bookings schedule.
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This why everyone’s hiring female suits, they’re such got bullshitters with men.
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Tried this at the local pub the other day. Didn’t get quite the same reception.
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They had a Banksy at your pub?
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The key to any good heist: Misdirection. Nicely done
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Hi Guys,
On a limited budget the campaign has had a load of PR including many newspaper mastheads in several sections over several days. It’s also been in tabloid and street press too. It’s also been received well globally (Huffington Post, LA Times, Daily Telegraph in London etc). As well as our trusted friends within trade press. Just do a Google search if interested.
However, that’s all icing on the cake and not purpose of the campaign.
The purpose was to get bums on seats, or bodies in beds. It’s been very successful, and thus far we are on target to exceed expectations.
I can assure you you’ll be able to delve into the details when it’s written up as an Effie submission.
Best,
Adam
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if the target audience was media industry, then great success. and brilliant steel girls
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great work well done!
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I love the langauge in the Ts & Cs of the competition, by the way: http://www.artserieshotels.com.....iction.pdf
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
I can vouch that the campaign reached at least some of the general public…
On a Melbourne train on the weekend a ‘loved-up hip young couple’ sitting opposite me were talking about stealing Banksy’s, and went on to say how nice the hotels were, and that they would love to stay there. I was trying to stop myself from laughing out loud.
If Naked’s client had been in my spot, he/she would have hugged Adam and his team.
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I must say, nice work – stealing it especially. Good job to all.
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An attention grabbing campaign that did it’s job. It reached far wider than just the media industry. I’ve been telling friends and family about this since I heard about it, so word is getting out past the immediate media circles. Nice job Naked.
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We all hate a good idea that we wish was our own and well executed. Naked crew, well done, the comments on this thread reinforce that, and you will always have haters, that’s what make it even more enjoyable!
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Bet no one can steal the Naked sign…..
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looking forward to reading the bed sales stats in the Effie submission. Hopefully it’ll be granular enough to determine how many HuffPo and LA Times readers flew across
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Well done Archie you got your name in print. Great work.
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I have been staying at The Olsen as a resident, the steal a bansky is a great idea.
However, poorly promoted! If a staff member didn’t tell me about it I would not have known, all they had was cards displayed on tables, no in-house message via the interactive TV service…I keep getting the earth hour message once a week and that is not till march.
I also find it hard to fathom that these girls did it all with the use of social media! I dare say they had a little inside help, the price tag itself would turn many Naked people on 😉
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