This morning we posted some pretty harsh words
about the text on www.tourdelee.com 
We’ve received a ton of emails today about it, so we thought we’d explain a bit
more about why we did what we did.

First, we didn’t set out to attack
Lee, his motives, the sponsors, the charities, or anything like that.  We have
an incredible amount of respect for the project and all of the people
involved… especially Lee.

But we were appaled by the text on the
site. Not because we just didn’t like it, but because it ties into something
that we write about a lot on the Wooster site - the razor edge line between
graffiti and advertising. We’ve written a lot about our opinions of graffiti in
advertisments and we’ve been very specific in giving reasons why we think
something works or doesn’t work.  For us, the success or failure in a project
comes in (a) getting the details right and (b) knowing your audience.  For
example, for us when Time Magazine did the campaign with CopeII they both got
the details right and they understood their audience.  When Axe Deoderant did a
graf campaign in Chicago they didn’t.  In both cases we were very specific.
/>
So most often when you hear discussions about graf being co-opted by
brands it’s always about advertising. So when we read the text on the tourdelee
site we realized that the discussion was not just about advertising, but also
about pr.  The point of railing against the text on the site was to point out
that it’s important to get the details right and know your audience in pr’ing an
event as well as in advertising it.  We wanted to use this as an example to
hopefully make people aware of how crazy this stuff can become so that they
won’t make the same mistake. 

Did we go a too far?  Sure. But we’re
passionate human beings, not computers.  We’re not drones who want to put up
photos all day long like a trained monkey. We have opinions and sometimes those
opinions explode - like they did this morning.  This is a weblog, not a sausage
factory.

Did we know we’d piss some people off?  Sure. But what we
wanted to do was to highlight some issues and call the publicist to task, not
trash Lee’s reputation or the event.  We support the motives, but not the
execution.

So here’s the deal for us - Graffiti artists getting
involved in events like Art Basel is a bit tricky, isn’t it? It’s not easy to
pull off. Art Basel is all about money, not your authenticity or history. It’s
about parties for “elite communitities” (we still don’t know what the hell that
means). 

So do we respect Lee and the event? Absolutely. Hopefully
our posting it on the Wooster site will bring more people to support and donate
to it.

Sorry if we offended anyone… especially Lee.  But for those
publicists who read this site - please try to get the details right and please
spend the time to know your audience.