As a means of legal and or illegal advertising

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Legal advertising graffiti on grocer's shopwindow, Warsaw, Poland

Graffiti has been used as a means of advertising both legally and illegally. In NYC, Bronx-based TATS CRU has made a name for themselves doing legal advertising campaigns for companies like Cola, McDonald's, Toyota, and MTV. In the U.K. Covent Garden's Boxfresh used stencil images of a Zapatista revolutionary in the hopes of cross referencing would promote their store. Smirnoff hired artists to use reverse graffiti (the use of high pressure hoses to clean dirty surfaces to leave a clean image in the surrounding dirt) to increase awareness of their product. Shepard Fairey, the artist behind the now iconic Barack Obama "HOPE" poster, rose to fame after his "Andre the Giant Has a Posse" sticker campaign, in which Fairey's art was plastered in cities all across the America. Fans of theCharlie Keeper novel have used stencil graffiti images of dragons and stylised story titles as a means to promote and support the rise of the story.

Many graffiti artists see legal advertising as no more than 'paid for and legalised graffiti' and have risen against mainstream adverts. The graffiti research lab crew have gone on to target several prominent adverts in New York as a means of making a statement against this criteria.