I’m a sucker for street art. I’m not really sure why that is. Maybe it stems from my high school days and listening to hip hop. Who knows? While street art (e.g. graffiti) has been around for ages, it has only recently broken into mainstream culture and high-end art galleries as a legitimate art form. It can also teach us a lot about a company’s marketing efforts both online and offline.

The most well-known street artists are fetching six and seven-figure amounts for their pieces and one artist even booked a nice payout after the Facebook IPO.

What are these street artists doing right and what can marketing professionals learn from them?

Consistent themes, styles, and point of view

Take a look at the piece at the top of this post by Banksy. It creates a visceral reaction in me and that is also why it is one of the most popular pieces he has made. Almost all of his pieces give me that same feeling. They all make a statement and portray his worldview unequivocally.

Artists such as Edgar Mueller go for the wow factor. Many of his massive 3-D creations have gone viral online, even old school chain email viral. The most fervent graffiti opponents’ jaws would drop at the sight of some of his pieces.

Marketing professionals should adopt a consistent branding approach and it starts with the culture and core values of the business. Make sure campaigns fall within the purview of the company’s overall brand. If your product serves a customer base filled with stuffy enterprise customers, it’s probably not the best idea to film a Gangnam Style parody video and slap it on the front page of your website.

Let people talk, share, and spread the word

Street artists are very good at putting something out there and letting the word spread organically. Of course, this is done mostly out of necessity since what they’re doing isn’t exactly legal in most instances. In fact, some street artists would probably argue that a piece doesn’t qualify as street art unless there’s a certain amount of illegality involved.

One of the best examples of manufactured virality comes from Shepard Fairey. I’m sure many of you have seen the image on the left. It’s what has become an iconic image of the wrestler Andre the Giant that Shepard created and plastered all over Los Angeles and the surrounding areas. I remember when I first saw the stickers back in the late 90′s in Santa Barbara. At the time I assumed, incorrectly, that it was some sort of skateboard related brand. Turns out, it was just Shepard trying to prove a point. He pulled off a massive branding joke and it paid off in a huge way for him. He now has a very successful clothing line and became famous for his painting of President Obama, even though it resulted in a very public lawsuit. The moral of his story is that brand consistency is powerful.

Design makes all the difference

The designs and images used to convey your company’s point of view help you attract the type of customers you’re looking for. Here’s a simple example: when my previous startup company was looking for an email marketing company, I compared MailChimp to Constant Contact. Guess which one I ended up using? That’s right, MailChimp. The branding of the two products is completely different and MailChimp comes across as more lighthearted and fun, I mean their name is MailChimp, after all. Constant Contact is a successful email marketing company, but they’re clearly going for a different, more corporate, client than a guy like myself from a small tech startup company.

Create great content

The best street artists are masters at their craft. They’ve spent countless hours honing their style and techniques so they can reproduce them quickly in order to not get caught by the authorities. Some of the huge pieces they get away with are absolutely mind boggling. They are dedicated to their brand and will stop at nothing to have their voices be heard. That type of dedication to perfection is contagious and it’s part of the reason why art collectors have swarmed to that artistic style lately.

Creating great content or a great product for a business is similar. Whether it’s publishing great articles in the New Yorker or building the world’s first gyroscopically-stabilized “rolling smart phone,” the goal is the same: create something that your customers love and want to flock to.

Where should you start?

I am a firm believer in mission, vision, and values for companies. Yes, even startup companies. Once you decide that your crazy idea could be a business, then you should start thinking about this stuff. Your mission, vision, and values set the tone for culture, branding, and external communications (e.g. blog posts, interviews, and press releases).

Below are a couple of items I liked that will help lead you in the right direction:

• How Great Leaders Inspire Action (a.k.a. Start With Why) by Simon Sinek is a TED Talk he gave back in 2009, but the advice he gives is timeless.
• Why You Should Focus On Branding First by Jeremiah Smith is an excellent Medium post I came across recently. Some people took the title too literally as finding product-market fit is what you should really do first.