We Wheatpasted Ten Thousand Posters Around DC This Year. Here’s What We Learned
It’s been a really busy year for the team at Re:Action. We’ve had the opportunity to support more than 100 organizations in 39 rallies, marches and press conferences. We’ve produced 78 hours of live streaming of 48 actions and events, wheat pasted almost 10,000 posters, and done 20 projections. Keeping with our mission of bringing professional advocacy tools to local, POC led and grassroots projects, we have been able to donate our time and gear on half of all projects.
One of the most exciting aspects of doing this work at scale is having the opportunity to experiment, try new things and learn as we go. While things have slowed down for the holiday season we wanted to share some of what we’ve learned throughout the year.
This year our team wheatpasted close to 10,000 posters, stickers and flyers around the streets of Washington, DC. We experimented with some new production methods, paid close attention to where posters stay up and where they get taken down, and piloted some other street heat tools. Here’s a look at what we learned:
Does anybody look at our posters!?!
A question we’ve always had is whether or not our street heat activities are effective. That’s a bit of a moving question because we’re using street heat in different ways. Sometimes we’re trying to get under the skin of a powerful person in their turf. When we put up posters announcing that Federalist Society Boss Leonard Leo was under investigation, we saw that many of the posters were quickly taken down. A surefire sign that we got under somebody’s skin.
Then former DOJ Attorney Jeff Clark (also known as Un-Indicted Co-Conspirator #3 in the DC election subversion case and Defendant #6 in the Georgia indictment) tweeted angrily about it.
Not to worry, we sent a team out to put the posters back up later that week.
But what is the reach of our posters? Outdoor advertising companies will cite the number of people who walk by one of their poster locations each day and the number of times an individual might see their message. But we generally haven’t been as precise in measuring reach or impact. To try to get a handle on that we ran some experiments using QR codes on posters.
Our first test showed some promising results. In the lead up to the Earth Day 2023 mobilization, we printed 500 large scale (24”x36”) posters. On those posters we placed a unique QR code that didn’t appear anywhere else meaning that any scans on that code would have come from someone physically walking up to one of our posters with their phone and scanning the QR code. We saw 185 scans of the QR code over the course of that campaign. Additionally we saw a measurable spike in direct traffic to the website coinciding with the week we pasted the posters.
Unfortunately, we didn’t realize that our QR code generator only tracks detailed metrics for 30 days so we didn’t download the raw data and these screenshot graphs are the only records we have from that experiment.
Earlier this fall we attempted a similar informal experiment, this time with posters that said “Let Gaza Live” and identical QR codes in each corner. We pasted them up around DC in two waves, one starting on November 24 and a second wave starting on December 12. There were about 300 posters in the first wave and about 200 posters in the second wave. That run resulted in 165 scans, with a noticeable peak the weekend immediately after we started pasting the posters.
Notably, there were clearly some pretty strong feelings about that poster. Many copies of that poster were torn down and scratched out with a level of enthusiasm that we hadn’t seen from previous projects.
Our preliminary take from those small experiments: People are definitely seeing our posters and engaging with them. But unsurprisingly they are less effective than online advertising at driving web traffic.
In 2024 we hope to run some additional experiments (this time, hopefully without losing the data!) to understand more about how people interact with different types of posters and messages across different geographies.
Stickers and Posters
This year we experimented with a number of different sizes for posters on wheat paste campaigns. The vast majority of posters were standard 11”x17” posters printed at BaseCamp, a local union print shop in Adams Morgan. They’re absolutely amazing. Check them out.
On a few projects we ordered smaller vinyl stickers to go with the full sized posters. Eventually we got the idea that we might just order big stickers and dispense with the mess of wheatpaste (and hopefully cover ground more quickly). The experiment with smaller stickers went well. Four inch by four inch square stickers were a great compliment for full sized posters. We could get them up with no measurable increase in time and cover areas that were too small for traditional posters.
But larger, poster-sized stickers didn’t seem to work out quite as well. They were definitely less adhesive than the wheat pasted posters; peeling off the backs of the stickers was time consuming and created a lot of waste, and the stickers were heavier to carry and more expensive to print.
Big Posters Were a Big Hit
This spring we found a vendor out of Illinois called M13 Graphics that prints bulk, large format posters for wheat pasting (the best paper for wheat pasting is ultra thin uncoated paper because the glue will more easily saturate the poster) at insanely low prices. We found that 24”x36” posters fit perfectly on the side of standard electrical boxes, and can nicely cover tons of other larger areas. Prices vary by required turnaround time (you should plan for at least a week) but we can pretty dependably get them printed and shipped for less than $2.50/poster for smaller print runs, and for as little as 80 cents each for large print runs with appropriate lead time.
These posters are great because they are clearly visible from cars and buses as well as pedestrians and so far they are pretty unique around DC. But, because of the size, there are a lot fewer viable locations to place these posters which makes for a more time and labor intensive project of hanging them around town.
Where Can We Wheatpaste
Wheatpasting is legal in Washington, DC as long as you file a copy of your poster at the Wilson Building and don’t place more than three posters on the same side of the street in any block. In practice, neither of those limitations seem to be actively enforced. But if it’s legal to put up posters, it’s also legal for other people to tear them down.
Based on our observations, it’s pretty rare for individuals to tear down posters unless they are friends with a shadowy powerbroker photographed on one of the posters or zionists outraged at the suggestion that we should “Let Gaza Live.” While it’s rare for individuals to actively tear down posters, “Clean Up Teams” paid by certain Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) will tear down posters with varying degrees of regularity. Most notably, the clean up teams in the Golden Triangle BID and Georgetown BID (Blue and Gold on the map below) generally tear down posters within 24 hours. The Downtown BID seems to send out teams to tear down posters at less frequent intervals, and it appears that the Capitol Hill BID has mostly given up on tearing down posters.
While the Capitol Hill BID doesn’t seem to be bothered by posters in their neighborhood, it is worth noting that wheatpasting is NOT legal on Capitol Grounds (the area in RED on the map). In our experience Capitol Police will aggressively defend their blank flat surfaces with threat of arrest so we generally stay far clear of the Capitol.
