With no slogans in sight, Sony's latest marketing campaign for its PlayStation Portable (PSP) crept onto city buildings with the uncanny likeness of authentic street art, and almost as mysteriously. "There were theories that Microsoft initiated the campaign to make Sony look bad," says Sheigh Crabtree, West Coast editor of Popgadget.net. Instead, the bug-eyed "kidsters" portrayed in the faux graffiti campaign, while they are the work of real graffiti artists hired by Sony, are solely designed to hype the company's portable media. In the ads, the caricatures use Sony's PSP as a skateboard, remote control and even a jack-in-the-box (though the hip quotient on the last is questionable).

"I first saw [the ads] outside the tattoo parlor on South and 13th streets," says Albert Yee, who runs a local blog called Dragonballyee. "At first, I thought it was a nice 'graff' piece and took a photo of it to post on Flickr." Yee says he eventually questioned the authenticity of the graffiti after seeing other versions near South Street and throughout Queen Village, even on a van parked on Bainbridge Street. "They were trying too hard to be cool," he says. "Instead of going the route Sprite did in the late '90s with painting murals in and around basketball courts, they hit graffiti walls, many times spraying over legitimate street art."

After much pressure from civic groups, the ads started disappearing from walls around town. "Days after the murals went up, they were painted out by city crews. In some cases, interestingly enough, community groups started the process of removal themselves," says Jane Golden, director of the Mural Arts Program.

"Our officials took the matter seriously and took Sony to task for this brazen attempt to circumnavigate our laws," says Mary Tracey, spokesperson for the Society Created to Reduce Urban Blight (SCRUB), another community group angered by the guerrilla marketing tactic. "This is important because more and more companies are hungry for fresh ways to attract consumers," says Tracey. "They see this technique as a way to make their brands and products seem hip. Philadelphia sent a clear message that it won't work here."

Molly Smith, a spokesperson for Sony's PlayStation division, did not answer questions about whether the tech company was forced to remove the ads in Philly or whether Sony would pay fines for breaking zoning laws. Philadelphia was one of several major cities targeted by the advertising, along with New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco, where ads were met with defacing messages like "Fony."

Sony got permission from property owners, whom they paid approximately $100 or more for each space. But according to the city's outdoor advertising and nonaccessory advertising rules, "The excessive number of commercial outdoor advertising signs contribute to visual clutter and detract from the aesthetic beauty of the City of Philadelphia." So the office of the managing director sent a cease-and-desist letter to Sony, saying the ads were illegal since no permits were used and zoning regulations were ignored, which is punishable up to $150 for each offense, hardly a drop in the bucket for Sony, with a reported net profit of $246 million for the quarter ending Sept. 30, when it shipped at least 2.75 million PlayStation Portables.

But where these ads showed up in time for the holiday, namely on Girard Avenue near 15th and 8th streets, as well as on Passyunk Avenue, most have been covered up with a fresh coat of paint.

"We had it for a couple of weeks," says Mike Delios, owner of Gennaro Pizza at 12th and South streets, referring to the ads, which were painted on the 12th Street side of his pizzeria. He had no problem with the campaign, allowing Sony to use the side of his restaurant for advertising, but Delios never received confirmation from Sony or the city that the ads would be removed. But after hearing about the campaign in the news, he says, "In a day, it disappeared." Delios says he was never notified as to why the ads were covered or who painted over them.

The same happened at a tattoo and body piercing parlor at 13th and South streets. This location displayed not only the kidsters, but also an ad for Miami Ink, a television show on TLC. Attempts to talk to the property owner were unsuccessful. However, Steve Grasse, CEO of Philadelphia's GYRO Worldwide, says the Miami Ink ads can be a good fit for a tattoo parlor interested in making added revenue from a related subject. The Sony ads, he says, were "Stupid Marketing 101."

The biggest problem with this marketing? "It comes off as inauthentic," Grasse says. "Two kinds of people are going to be annoyed by this—community groups trying to clean up graffiti" and "people who are into authentic street culture that find this an appropriation of what they think is sacred. I think people respect brands that don't try and be a part of their scene."

Golden says a lot of graffiti art she's seen in other cities has lately been driven by advertising. "It's a strange irony that graffiti art, once thought of as almost pure urban poetry, has been taken over by Madison Avenue. Ads are ads," she says. "When you think of a city filled with ads—like the illegal ones Sony did—it just, in my mind, equals blight."

SCRUB's Tracey fears that graffiti-inspired outdoor advertising is an emerging trend. She says, "We need to be vigilant in our efforts to keep it from invading our neighborhoods."

In addition to citing Sony, Philadelphia's Department of Licenses and Inspections and the Law Department also issued citations to GoPoster, a guerrilla advertising company from New York City. Tracey says the department brought GoPoster to court after residents contacted SCRUB about 20 new billboards that appeared suddenly on the walls of stores, abandoned buildings and fences in their neighborhoods. A temporary restraining order was issued and GoPoster was ordered to remove the signs. "GoPoster has decided not to do business in Philadelphia," says Tracey.

How Philadelphia's efforts to crack down on unmarked advertising will affect corporations like Sony is unclear. The motivations for such marketing efforts, however, are much more obvious.

"The street campaign cost very little and made lots of people continue to talk about the product," says Popgadget's Crabtree. "It seems misguided and arrogant. However, the campaign has helped keep the PSP in the zeitgeist. There's a strong sentiment among 'netizens' that a wealthy multinational corporation trying to sell more product by clowning street artists only alienates legitimate graf enthusiasts, not to mention lots of little neighborhoods across the country."

Within the last week, finding these ads has been increasingly difficult around town, pointing to successful efforts on behalf of Mural Arts, SCRUB and the City of Philadelphia.

"We believe every citizen has a right to have art in their life. What Sony did was an insult," says Golden. "Philadelphians will not put up with these tactics."