Rat problem or opportunity? Tiny NYC billboards reimagine real-life products for rodents
For centuries, government leaders and public health experts have been trying to get a handle on New York City's rat community, which continues to grow in size. But a new group is curious to explore how rats react not to contraceptives or sealed trash bins - but advertising.
Five graduate students at VCU Brandcenter in Richmond, Virginia are the masterminds behind Ads for Rats, a collection of tiny billboards geared toward the rats of New York City's streets. The marketing-campaign-meets-public-art exhibition was installed in late February and has been gaining traction on social media.
The 13-inch-tall billboards aren't only geared to the street-roaming rodents in size but in copy, too. The billboards market Band-Aids as sleep eye masks, Staples rubber bands as workout equipment and Kraft macaroni and cheese noodles as stream-floating lifeboats.
Ads for Rats has not worked directly with any brands. Rather, the billboards are a statement on the marketing industry.
"We see how sophisticated brands are when they talk to people and how massive the scale of that communication has become," Ads for Rats writer Henry Coffey told Paste BN. "What started as a joke became also this sort of academic pursuit of − Can something really small breakthrough?"
How it got started
In addition to Coffey, the Ads for Rats team includes Callum Leitenberg, Boyan Zlatarski, strategist Emma Kerencheva and art director Alex Ward.
The quintet previously worked together on Adobe's Scan to Revolt campaign, which asked Gen Zers to use Adobe software to create new, unique advertisements for industries that have traditionally stuck to a common "look." The campaign won Design and Art Direction's 2024 New Blood Black and Yellow Pencil Awards.
The idea for Ads for Rats began in the summer of 2024, when a few of the group's members were visiting New York City and saw a rat scurry into the hole of a tree.
"There's a lot of expensive New York real estate, and this rat has, at his disposal, a very prime real estate in Brooklyn," Zlatarski said. "And we were thought, 'They are prime citizens, in fact, the natives of New York, so we should include them in this consumer economy.' And from there on, as we bring the joke forward.
"If we are living in this sea of huge million-dollar gargantuan (advertising) in places like Times Square, perhaps a tiny ad for a rat might be the most noticeable thing, purely through contrast," he continued.
Thus, the idea was born.
How to target ads for rats, a masterclass
"In order to make this idea feel really strong and real, we kind of made it a mission to be as serious about it as possible," Ward said.
Before copy could be written, art could be designed and billboards could be constructed, research had to be completed. In addition to learning about where rats in the city live and how humans perceive them, the team analyzed which brands and products could be used by rats in different ways and were visually compelling.
The team landed on 10 brands, including Staples, Kraft, Calvin Klein, Nerf, Tech Deck, Samsung, Band Aid and Airstream.
When it came to construction, the team said they ordered miniature billboards online, printed out their advertisements and then participated in some "classic arts and crafts" to assemble them.
"It was a really fun process to get physical with it too because a lot of times what we do here is usually digital," Ward said. "So taking this opportunity to make something real and then actually go put it and showcase it in a real place was also a part of the excitement of this project."
The Ads for Rats were then placed throughout the streets of New York City − literally.
The team was intentional about where they placed the billboards. Some are outside the stores they promote and others are in areas that traditionally feature lots of large, expensive advertisements, like Times Square.
A rat problem or a rat opportunity?
Deemed one of the United States' "rattiest" cities, New York City has been looking to tackle its rat problem for years. In 2022, the New York City Council established "rat-mitigation zones" to offer special efforts in neighborhoods with high rat rates. And in 2023, former New York City Mayor Eric Adams named Kathleen Corradi the city's first "rat czar," tasked with cracking down on the rodents.
Speaking to Paste BN on Tuesday, the Ads for Rats team said they understand the seriousness and severity of rats as a public health issue in New York City. The project doesn't aim to take away from this but instead, offer a new perspective.
"New York, known for its hustle, should know better than to look at it as a rat problem, rather than a rat opportunity," Zlatarski said with a laugh.
What's the future of Ads for Rats?
Coffey, Leitenberg, Kerencheva, Ward and Zlatarski all graduated from VCU Brandcenter in May.
While the future of Ads for Rats hasn't been ironed out, the team wants to keep working together and has already had several brands reach out, inquiring about their own rat billboards. Zlatarski said maybe a small, private art exhibition featuring the billboards will also be held down the road.
"We've been very impressed by the reaction that it received from the moment we set them down on the streets of New York City in person, and then just as impressed by the reaction we've seen online," Coffey said. "I think overall, we maybe even have found there's more here than we expected in terms of making a really, really small creative statement and standing out."
Greta Cross is a national trending reporter at Paste BN. Follow her on X and Instagram @gretalcross. Story idea? Email her at gcross@usatoday.com.