The beach is one big billboard for companies looking to surreptitiously market their products, from Game of Thrones to Jim Beam, which would be annoying if most of these guerrilla installations weren’t so fun. Plus, some of these site-specific seaside installations are the work of mysterious anonymous artists, or organizations raising awareness for issues like sea turtle protection and skin cancer avoidance.

Game of Thrones Dragon Washed Up on a British Beach

A 40-foot-long dragon skull seemingly washed up on Charmouth Beach in Dorset, England in the spring of 2013, likely only puzzling onlookers who aren’t familiar with the HBO series Game of Thrones. Still, it’s a pretty fun example of guerrilla marketing, especially since this area is known as the ‘Jurassic Coast,’ where lots of dinosaur fossils turn up. It took three sculptors over two months to design, sculpt and paint the skull. Who could resist climbing inside?

Jim Beam Creates the World’s Largest Cooler at Bondi Beach

Jim Beam and the ESKY cooler company teamed up to temporarily transform the Bondi Icebergs Pool into the world’s largest cooler for the filming of a commercial. The cooler was filled with about half a million gallons of water, over 500 giant ice cubes and 33 supersized Jim Beam cans.

King Kong Footsteps at the Santa Monica Pier

Giant footsteps and a smashed lifeguard truck appeared to signal total chaos at the Santa Monica Pier in June 2010, signaling the opening of the new Universal Studios Hollywood theme park attraction, King Kong 360 3-D. This ambient advertisement by the firm David&Goliath was a accompanied by a ‘news report’ on YouTube. Does this make anyone else miss the old King Kong ride? RIP, King Kong Encounter, which burned down in 2008.

Unexplained Giant Lego Man

A life-sized Lego Man washed up on a Florida beach with the somewhat nonsensical message ‘NO REAL THAN YOU ARE’ printed on its chest. Measuring about 8 feet tall and weighing 100 pounds, the ‘man’ was discovered on the Siesta Key beach. The Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office sent out a tongue-in-cheek press release reporting that they had taken the ‘man’ into custody, and found ‘Ego Leonard’ written on his back. Then, another one washed up in Japan. Turns out, Ego Leonard is the pseudonym of an anonymous Dutch artist, and his creations show up periodically on beaches around the world. Somebody should warn King Kong, so he doesn’t step on him.

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Messages In The Sand 12 Great Guerrilla Ads At The Beach River Banks

While billboard advertising can occasionally shock us with totally unexpected visuals, by and large, these massive champions of commercialism are not exactly pretty or interesting. Enter artists from around the world, who – with permission or not – come in and replace those ads, whether to subvert the original message or just to make passersby smile.

Double Happiness Billboard Swing

(images via: didierfaustino)

A billboard becomes a place for interactive play, made into a swing set with incredible views of New York City by artist Didier Faustino. Entitled ‘Double Happiness’, the project “responds to the society of materialism where individual desires seem to be prevailing over all. This nomad piece of urban furniture allows the reactivation of different public spaces and enables inhabitants to reappropriate fragments of their city.”

“They will both escape and dominate public space through a game of equilibrium and desequilibrium. By playing this “risky” game, and testing their own limits, two persons can experience together a new perception of space and recover an awareness of the physical world.”

Artists Take Over Whitewashed Billboards

(images via: animal NY)

Not only did Public Ad Campaign‘s New York Street Advertising Takeover whitewash 120 illegal advertisements located throughout the city, it also brought in over 50 artists to transform these new blank canvases into works of art. Instead of displaying an onslaught of commercialism, these spaces became interactive spaces for messages of peace and local pride. See more at Animal New York.

The Billboard Art Project: Taking Over LED Displays

(images via: billboard art project flickr)

Based in Richmond, Virginia, the Billboard Art Project has spread across the United States as artists take over those massively distracting digital billboards with LED displays. Though it’s not totally subverting the advertisements – they still run as usual – the art appears momentarily in between each ad, perhaps prompting onlookers to wonder exactly what it is that they’re looking at. Many of these works were captured by the organization’s Flickr group.

The Urban Land Project

(images via: the anthropologist)

Rather than an ad for yet another local bond company or huge international bank, locals in urban Los Angeles and Philadelphia got to view soothing images of the nature that can be found right within their own cities. Photographer Tim Simmons captured images of each city’s hidden natural wonders and displayed them on billboards for ‘The Urban Land Project.’

Art In Stead of Ads

(images via: how many billboards)

21 commissioned works by leading contemporary artists were presented onb billboards throughout Los Angeles in February and March 2010 for the project ‘How Many Billboards: Art in Stead’.

“The philosophical proposition of the exhibition is simple: art should occupy a visible position in the cacophony of mediated images in the city, and it should do so without merely adding to the visual noise. How Many Billboards? Art In Stead proposes that art periodically displace advertisement in the urban environment.

Billboards are a dominant feature of the landscape in Los Angeles. Thousands line the city’s thoroughfares, delivering high-end commercial messages to a repeat audience. Given outdoor advertising’s strong presence in public space, it seems reasonable and exciting to set up the possibility for art to be present in this field. The sudden existence of artistic speech mixed in with commercial speech provides a refreshing change of pace. Commercial messaging tells you to buy; artistic messaging encourages you to look and to think.”

Hand from Above by Chris O’Shea

(images via: chris o’shea)

Chris O’Shea imagines a world in which we humans are manipulated by an outside force, unseen except for a giant hand. In O’Shea’s interactive public art exhibit for BBC Big Screen in Liverpool, pedestrians watch a live feed on a billboard as the giant hand pokes and prods them in real time.

From Gajitz: “The installation is called Hand From Above, and it’s geek art at its finest. It was created, according to the artist, to encourage people to slow down in the midst of their daily routines. By throwing something completely unexpected into their day, O’Shea is injecting a little laughter into everyone’s lives. If the video above is any indication, most pedestrians love the project. Only a few walked by without even a smile, and most who saw themselves being harassed on-screen stopped to play along.”

Thoughtful Typography by Robert Montgomery

(images via: robert montgomery)

Artist Robert Montgomery replaces advertising with profound and poignant messages about love, human interaction and the world we live in. The artist “works in a poetic and melancholic post-situationist tradition.” His typographic works bear such disconcerting and thought-provoking messages as this: “The flood will lift the ghosts from the Hollywood Lawn Cemetery and they will disappear like ether in the new dead air. All the names will be erased from the billboards and the theaters and the piers and the magazines and the monuments. You live by myths of immortality, and your myths are not safe.”

Subliminal Billboards

(images via: unurth)

Billboards throughout Murcia, Spain bore strange fragments of type that didn’t make sense until seen as a whole, revealed by the artist Sam3. “”Murcia is infected with the plague of billboards everywhere, most of them neglected. 12 altered billboards to write a word that is hiding behind all this.”

U.S. Marines: The Change is Forever

(image via: arthur tubman)

It was all too easy to subvert a billboard by the U.S. Marines, which really did bear the ambiguous slogan ‘The Change is Forever’. An unidentified artist simply covered the young man’s face with that of a stylized skull, giving it a new meaning altogether.

Rebel Without a Lung by Jorge Rodriguez Geralda

(image via: fecal face)

Artist Jorge Rodriquez Geralda is known for painting his own images onto public surfaces like street signs, the sides of abandoned buildings and even entire construction sites. One notable early work is ‘Rebel Without a Lung’, a subversion of a Newport cigarette ad in New York City, completed in 1994.

McDonalds Billboard by the Billboard Liberation Front

(image vía: camarografo)

It wasn’t too hard to echo growing public sentiment about the quality of McDonald’s fast food. The Billboard Liberation Front just made two small changes to this McDonalds billboard in San Francisco so that the text reads ‘You have about 10,000 tastebuds. Kill them all.’ At the bottom right corner, the company’s slogan ‘I’m lovin’ it’ becomes ‘I’m sick of it.’

Banksy’s Los Angeles Billboards

(images via: design boom)

Graffiti artist Banksy notably altered a billboard in Los Angeles prior to the Academy Awards in February 2011, likely to call attention to the nomination of his documentary ‘Exit Through the Gift Shop’. A rather lecherous Micky Mouse, cocktail in hand, was painted onto an existing billboard along with a drugged-out Minnie Mouse and a banner reading, ‘Living the Dream.’ It was quickly removed.

The East London Decapitator

(images via: the decaptitator)

More than a century after Jack the Ripper, London has a new killer on the prowl. This one may be taking the heads of billboard and advertising figures rather than living humans, but the works are still pretty gory. Not only are the heads painted out of the ads, but there’s lots of spattered blood left behind.

From severed arms to crosses made from marijuana, shocking imagery in ads aims to get our attention – and that they do. Advertisers are using bold and bizarre visuals to draw eyes in an increasingly cluttered world and their attempts range from disgusting gross-out tactics to clever interactive displays. Some of these 15 ads effectively help us remember what might otherwise be an obscure brand, while others fall flat, or worse, make us sick.

Finetra: Where Even Nightmares Come to Rest

(image via: scary ideas)

Finetra’s bedding is so comfortable, your razor-toothed evil alien demons will give up on their nightmarish intentions and just curl up with you instead.

You Eat What You Touch

(image via: adpunch)

Mmm, hamster muffin! This ad for Unilever’s Lifebuoy antibacterial soap tries a gross-out tactic to make people paranoid about what germs might be lingering on their hands when they eat.

If You Aren’t Totally Clean, You Are Filthy

(images via: creative advertising world)

A similar ad for Just Liquid Soap states, “If you aren’t totally clean, you’re filthy.”

Exhibit Yourself

(image via: trends updates)

The grotesque image of a man holding open the flayed skin of his chest, showing off his internal organs to the world, is meant to tempt viewers into ‘exhibiting themselves’ at HypeGallery.com, a place where users could show off their artwork and films.

Farewell to Arms

(image via: trendhunter)

A severed arm on the street would definitely attract some attention, and it was a fitting guerrilla stunt for the DVD release of Quentin Tarantino’s gory 2007 movie, ‘Death Proof’, in Amsterdam.

Mmm, Roach Pizza

(image via: ads of the world)

Imagine devouring an entire pizza and then seeing a cockroach in the box. A pest control company calling itself Dr. Barata (Dr. Cockroach) made up these boxes to scare pizza consumers into calling for help… or maybe just calling health inspectors on the pizza joint that thought these boxes were a good idea.

This Might Make You Puke

(images via: ads of the world)

Italian B-movie store Bloodbuster brought on the gags with a series of puke-themed posters that say “you can’t please everyone.” Doesn’t it make you want to rent one of their movies?

Get Them Off Your Dog

(image via: hooked on ads)

Gross out tactics aren’t the only way to get attention. Clever and interactive, this massive Frontline poster on a mall floor turns people into fleas when viewed from above.

Kiss My Glass

(image via: ad hunt)

Does this ad campaign imply that wearing Glassino sunglasses makes you look like an ass?

Samsung MP3 Player

(image via: ads of the world)

Evidently, this ad for a Samsung MP3 player is telling us that using their product is like having a tiny rapper yelling into your ear. Which is to say, awesome.

We Protect Your Cattle from Almost Everything

(image via: pixel pasta)

Barbed wire company Ideal Alambrec is up front about their product’s limitations: it’ll protect your cattle from almost everything. But when it come to aliens, there’s simply no guarantees.

Does It Matter How You Achieve Your Spiritual High?

(image via: ad freak)

Wonder Cafe, a forum for spiritual discussion, courted controversy with this startling ad featuring two joints formed into a cross. Whether the ad is interesting or crass may depend upon your own religious views, but it definitely attracted some attention.

Those Are Some Dangerous Nose Hairs

(images via: animal)

In what seems to be a bit of a safety hazard, Panasonic twisted power lines through the nostrils on a series of billboards in Indonesia to push nose hair clippers.

Come As You Are (Darth Vader)

(image via: advertolog)

McDonalds told the world to ‘come as you are’ in a long print ad campaign that featured some unexpected characters – like Darth Vader here, who somehow doesn’t seem too happy with his meal.

Don’t Talk While He Drives

(images via: fubiz)

This Bangalore public safety ad, aiming to prevent cell phone-related accidents, tells us that if you keep someone on the phone while they’re trying to drive, you could end up with blood on your hands… and on your face… not to mention splattered all over your clothing and bedding. Careful, that stuff stains.

(images via: martin reis)

Last year, Toronto citizens asked themselves a question that led to an unprecedented law: Why should we have to look at so many billboards? In April 2010, the city instituted taxes and restrictions on public advertising, but some ad companies decided to break the law – and those rogue billboards were themselves subject of guerrilla action recently when activists covered them with art.

The large-scale urban street hack was organized by Toronto Street Advertising Takeover (TOSAT) and plastered 41 illegal advertising pillars and 20 10′-by-20′ billboards with 85 prints by a variety of artists, from graffiti-style urban art to whimsical drawings of birds.

Toronto has long had restrictions on billboards, but they were complex and difficult to enforce. April’s bylaw introduced a new tax on billboards that funds art in public spaces and pays for enforcement, but according to activists, companies like Pattison Outdoor Advertising – which was targeted by the guerrilla action – continue to flout the law.

“When you walk through the city and you know you have no control over that space, it’s like walking through a mall,” said ‘Posterchild’, a Torontoist.com contributor who was involved with the project. “It’s more about feeling at home. And it’s impossible for me to feel at home in my city if I don’t feel I’m a part of it.”

Not too long ago, walking along a city sidewalk would yield plenty of unique experiences in guerrilla art. Tags left by taggers who climbed into precarious positions, impromptu murals on the sides of buildings, and bizarre urban art installations were all a part of city life that some people admired and others considered a scourge.

Advertisements were clearly delineated, different and separate from art. They were easily recognizable as advertisements and no one expected them to be anything else.

Today, the urban environment includes not only separate instances of art and advertisements, but advertisements that look suspiciously like art. Guerrilla advertisements that use the familiar rough-edged look of graffiti – and others that use actual graffiti – are found now in cities around the world.

So what’s the difference between guerrilla art and guerrilla advertisement? How can you differentiate when the lines between the two are blurred as they are?

You might think that the distinction between the two would be obvious. After all, the goal of advertising is to sell you something, while the goal of art is less easy to define. Guerrilla art states a political message, subverts a common belief, exists simply for the pleasure of the beholder, or any number of other reasons.

So telling the difference between art and advertisement should be easy. But what about advertisements that are truly beautiful? What about the street artists who are paid to use their art to advertise a product? Is that still advertising, or can it also be art? Street art that isn’t commissioned and for which the artist hasn’t received permission may very well be a masterpiece, but in the eyes of the law it is a criminal offense.

The line is blurred even further when you take into account the litany of corporate logos and slogans invading our space at every turn. They may be advertisements, but at what point do they become graffiti? They seem to fit some people’s definitions of visual litter: they are bright, they are ever-present, they are distracting and invasive.

Besides the sheer number of advertisements all around us, many companies have figured out that the corporate penalties for unlicensed guerrilla advertisements are rarely enforced. When they are enforced, the fines are usually so small that they cost much less than the permits would have. Because of this, unlicensed guerrilla ads have been on the rise in recent years.

So if guerrilla artists can get paid to put up graffiti, and if corporations can put up ads without paying, where does guerrilla art stop and guerrilla advertising begin?

Maybe the most confusing part of this debate is the street artists who have gained popularity, acceptance, and even fame for their urban art. Artists like Banksy and Neckface, once considered criminals, now enjoy successful careers as artists. Shephard Fairey, creator of Obey, and artist collective Faile have gained commercial success as designers and are now living the dream of making a living from their art. Yet they continue to post urban art, often without permits or permission. You might say that these artists are engaging in guerrilla advertising since their street art now promotes their commercial art.

Some groups are majorly unhappy about street space and urban art being co-opted by corporations who are almost never subjected to the same punishments as individual artists. The Anti-Advertising Agency, along with Graffiti Research Lab, recently carried out a brilliant campaign calling attention to the advertising infestation in NYC. The AAA and GRL want city dwellers to be aware that, while graffiti artists go to jail every day for tagging or stenciling, corporations get away with large-scale illegal guerrilla marketing stunts, as well as legal campaigns that are simply visually overwhelming.

Has the life been sucked out of urban art by too many advertisements? Have corporations been stealing from artists and using their trailblazing ideas and techniques to promote their own commercial interests?

Look closely. We think that the constant battle between advertisements and art has given birth to an entirely new urban environment. In today’s cities, corporations do their best to use whatever tricks they can to get our attention. Artists do their best to promote their own ideals, whether those be freedom of expression, the right to display their art, reclaiming the urban landscape, culture jamming, subvertising, or simply creating something beautiful and meaningful. When the two collide, a fascinating new breed of urban landscape results.

The urban environment now includes advertisements with cleverly worded additions from street artists alongside brilliant urban art. Ads created by respected street artists share space with the typically polished ads from professional advertisers. The overall picture is surreal, blending art with commerce and involving a significant overlap of the two.

The rules change daily in business and in art, and as such it is becoming increasingly difficult to consistently tell the difference between them. Many times, we find ourselves missing the commercial message on a beautiful ad or looking for the product placement in a piece of striking art. Will the already-faint lines between the two one day become completely transparent? Only time will tell.