The Graffiti School offers hands-on courses teaching the art of spray painting and sketching, alongside lessons on the history and evolution of graffiti and street art styles.
Challenge
ABRO, the company behind Sabotage spray paint, faced declining sales of its flagship product. With competition in the street art spray paint market intensifying, traditional marketing strategies were no longer effective. Research revealed that the brand had lost credibility with graffiti artists, who discouraged others from using Sabotage paint, leading to a significant drop in sales. The challenge was to reverse this negative perception and reposition the brand within the street art community.
Solution
The target audience was identified as aspiring graffiti artists with limited budgets—primarily high school students and early university students. This group needed trusted, authoritative information before making a purchase.
The campaign was framed as educational, emphasizing that expensive paint isn’t always the best choice for beginners.
Build a community around the brand. The foundation of this community was an offline graffiti school, offering workshops on sketching and spray painting techniques. Social media, particularly VK, became the central hub for engagement. The VK group facilitated discussions, ran contests, and created a direct line of communication between the brand and its users. To further support the community, a dedicated website was launched, featuring curated articles and resources about graffiti culture.
Results
Graduates of the graffiti school became brand advocates, spreading the message of Sabotage’s affordable, quality paint. The brand successfully tapped into a new, younger audience—high school students—and grew a community of over 30,000 engaged members. Over the next decade, the VK group and the graffiti school continued to thrive, transforming Sabotage’s reputation. The brand shifted from being viewed as inferior to carving out a unique niche as the go-to spray paint for beginner artists.
Roles: launch strategy, brand positioning, social media, brand consistency, cost management, team collaboration
