So over Christmas, I was in Christchurch. As a joke conversation in the garden at Brian, Anna and the two Josh’s flat, we discussed the ability to mount a poster campaign to make Brian famous.
It was kind of a joke because I pointed out that Brian’s smiling face was quite pleasant to look at, and that his friendly expression would make him affable.
So, due to my involvement in this conversation, the Brian poster campaign became a reality.
First of all, I asked Nick to design a poster. Will works for Phantom, so step two was going to be reasonably easy.
The next step was to get them printed. Will and I decided on a series of A0 and A3.
We were beginning to worry about the cost of the campaign and talked to some friends over the Lawrence Arabia show at Wunderbar. Jasper was keen to front the cash, which meant this was going to be quite viable.
Will showed the poster campaign to his boss Jamey, who loved it. In a further joyful twist, he suggested that Phantom would do the campaign for free.
Christchurch had suffered quite a knock since September’s massive earthquake. There seemed to be a small group of people who professed love of the city by crafts and grafitti and this Brian campaign, was another little part of that.
So on a rainy Sunday morning, we met up at C1, the week before Christmas to see our efforts come to fruition.
We walked through the city, until we found our first Brian. An A0 on Cashel Mall.
This campaign was then followed by the Facebook group.
128 people joined, which was pretty good, I think. There are people who are part of the group that Brian does not know. Which is great.
He said the week was quite surreal, people would stare at him in the street and he had a few random interactions with strangers.
It really did bring me a great deal of joy, every time I saw Brian’s face, that week before Christmas.
Merry Christmas Christchurch.