Why tiny ads targeting rats are popping up all over New York City

A group of students at VCU Brandcenter are behind a series of tiny billboards running in New York with ads targeting New York’s biggest untapped audience segment: rats.

Emma Kerencheva, Boyan Zlatarski, Henry Coffey, Callum Leitenberg and Alex Ward, all students at VCU Brandcenter who graduate this year, launched tiny billboards across the city this week, imagining how rats would use human products. 

The comedic spec work depicts rats using Staples’ rubber bands as fitness bands, Tech Decks as full-size skateboards (for rats), and Kraft macaroni as a lifeboat for the next sewer flood.

The miniature OOH ads launched alongside an announcement for a parody agency called Ad for Rats, the world's first full-service agency welcoming rats to the consumer economy. Ad for Rats specializes in taking a “rodential approach to ads” and has a website, a LinkedIn page, and an Instagram account. It boasts “capabilities in advertising, planning, direct response, digital, design and branded content” to turn “every rat problem into a rat opportunity for brands,” the company said on LinkedIn.

 

 

 

 

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The humorous, multi-layered project was created as an effort to capture attention for the creatives in a difficult job market. What began as a joke blossomed when the students realized that going small sometimes has a greater element of surprise and could be a nontraditional way to flex their abilities. 

“Coming into the industry, getting noticed as ad talent is quite a difficult thing, especially in a canvas like New York. With the trillions of dollars being spent on advertising to humans, us five students cannot compete with that, so we had to find another niche,” said Boyan Zlatarski, copywriter and “chief cheese officer” at Ads for Rats. “Seeing how rats are going to outnumber humans in New York City by 2063, we thought we should welcome them into the consumer economy, and maybe it would be a good way to stand out.”

“We wanted to show that we could take something super small and still make an impact in a huge city like New York,” said Callum Leitenberg, copywriter and “chief chomp officer” at Ads for Rats. 

The group is open to legitimately operating a bespoke agency and, depending on the response, has a real inquiry form on its website through which brands can reach out for work.

“We have a longer-term goal of something much bigger … and something much smaller,” said Henry Coffey, copywriter and “chief squeak officer.”
 

In creating the billboards, the group developed a heat map showing where some of the biggest rat colonies in New York City are located, placing the mini-OOH ads nearby. They captured images of the ads near trash bags, sewers and elsewhere.

To their surprise, the students noticed that humans in Times Square were more likely to ignore the large ads surrounding them to bend down and look at the small ones, making it an effective medium for human attention as well. 

“[We realized] the power of small in a world where advertising is so big. Continuing to pursue the areas where a small thing has the surprisingly largest impact was a constant thought for us,” said Coffey. 

The ads were created using real assets of rat photography, combining them with photos the students took themselves, said Alex Ward, art director and “chief tunnel officer.” “We wanted to show these real products as they would be used for rats. So we had to keep the proportions and context accurate.” From there, the copy wrote itself, he added.

In addition to 10 mini-billboards, the students are placing stickers on lampposts and electrical boxes across New York. The group plans to continue the campaign with a second iteration reimagining more products. 

“We made this campaign to prove that no matter how absurd the brief, and no matter how small the canvas, today’s students know how to make an impact,” said Henry Coffey. Leitenberg added, “We like to fight for the little guys.”

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