‘Angels & Demons’ leaves its mark on L.A.

As part of its marketing campaign to lure potential moviegoers to director Ron Howard’s new ‘Da Vinci Code’ follow-up film starring Tom Hanks, Sony hired an outside marketing firm to graffiti the film’s title on the sidewalks of Los Angeles. Although such graffiti-like ads aren’t new to Hollywood’s movie marketers, not everyone thinks it’s cool. ‘Marketers will do anything in this country to get your attention even if it’s obnoxious and disrespectful,’ says Paul Lopez, a 28-year-old freelance writer and musician who came across one of the stenciled ads on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile district of L.A. ‘This is marketing at its very lowest,’ added Lopez, who said he once worked in marketing (but not in Hollywood). ‘The idea is to make money at any cost.’ Well, we have some good news for Lopez or anyone else who might have been offended by the ads. Sony says the outside agency it hired to do the handiwork used biodegradable chalk that is ‘completely removable.’ Not only that, the studio also says it instructed the vendor to ‘clean any locations where remnants of the chalk still exist.’ READ THE REST