The recent spoof Meta Glasses adverts in London show that subvertising is alive and well – and brands and advertisers should pay attention. Guerrilla anti-advertising, campaigns that subvert or satirise a brand's communications can have real power and impact, especially when they're more honest or engaging than the original creatives or connect better with prevailing public sentiment.
With that in mind, it feels like a good time to look back at the history of anti-advertising and some of the best subvertising examples to see when it's worked best, and what brands can learn from it (also see our pick of the best billboard adverts for more inspiration).
What is subvertising?
The word subvertising is a portmanteau of “subversion” and “advertising”. A form of culture jamming, it refers to an action or artwork that aims to subvert real brand advertising. This can range from spontaneous graffiti scrawled on a billboard to more planned détournement and coordinated campaigns, either targeting the original advert or replicating its likeness in another location
It has a rich history, from the Billboard Liberation Front in San Francisco and BUGA UP in Australia in the late '70s to the Adbusters Media Foundation's institutionalisation of the practice in the '90s and the anti-Tesla and Meta Glasses adverts of today.
The Billboard Liberation Front
I'm not sure if it's possible to really say when subvertising began, but the formation of The Billboard Liberation Front in San Francisco in 1977 is often cited as a key moment. The group exalted billboard jacking beyond individual acts of mischief into something more like an organised movement, or even an art form.
The BLF identified key elements for subverting ads in a way that engaged the public. Often matching brands' fonts, colours and layouts, they used humour to parody PR language, crafting critiques that resonated with the public at a time of growing skepticism toward consumerism. Still operating today, they're also media savvy, issuing press releases and media kits to ensure wider coverage.
BUGA UP's battle against tobacco advertising
In the late '70s and '80s , BUGA UP (Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotion) took on tobacco advertising in Australia and won. They hijacked billboards to modify brand names and slogans, often by erasing or adding a few letters. Benson and Hedges could become "Be on edge". John Player Special became "Lung Slayer Special".
BUGA UP questioned the morality of cigarette advertising at a time that a lot of people had the same ethical concerns – public fundraising helped cover the fines when members of the group were arrested. It might not be a coincidence that Australia banned billboard tobacco advertising in 1993, six years before the US and ten years before the UK.
Adbusters shows reality
In the 1990s, Canada-based Adbusters took subvertising to another level. Going beyond billboard hijacking, it began producing "anti-adverts" or "uncommercials" with the same level of creativity and professional polish as a real ad agency. It also launched a print magazine and promotes Buy Nothing Day on the same day as Black Friday.
The group was established as a formal media foundation after TV channels refused to air its 1988 animation Talking Rainforest. The piece was a response to an early example of greenwashing from the British Columbia Council of Forest Industries that tried to present tree farms as forests.
Like BUGA UP, some of Adbusters' most memorable campaigns targeted advertising that much of the public viewed as harmful. In its series of spoofs criticising the fashion industry's use of potentially harmful body images, an image of a woman bent over a toilet bowl in the style of a Calvin Klein ad presented a more realistic portrayal of an Obsession.
Adbusters showed the brand's own visual design language could become even more powerful when it was used against them.
Brandalism's appeal to creatives
By the 2000s, subvertising was evolving through loose-nit collectives with a connected vision running global coordinated actions. Founded in the UK in 2012, Brandalism shifted its focus from specific interventions to large campaigns, and sought to bring others on board.
Professional artists, including Gee Vaucher, Robert Montgomery and Peter Kennard, have taken part with other volunteers in initiatives with specific objectives, like calling out fossil fuel companies and airlines over climate change. The group's often placed work near advertising offices in a bid to get creative professionals to switch sides.
AI trolls AI
McDonald's got two lessons for the price of one when it tried running an AI-generated Christmas ad in the Netherlands last year: the public doesn't like AI art, and it can be hard to make it go away once you've unleashed it.
The backlash to the "most terrible time of the year" was so strong that McDonald's pulled the advert, but filmmaker Jacob Reed and his agency All Trades wouldn't let it off that easy. since AI-generated work doesn't qualify for copyright protection, and AI-generated characters don't have contracts, they used AI to turn McDonald's AI-generated character rogue.
“I could say the McDonald's commercial I was in was an overstimulating mess filled with unsettling character designs, poor visual treatments, and AI effects that bungle basic physical realism,” the character was made to say before eating a Burger King Whopper.
There was some debate among AI critics about whether the ends justified the means, but a point was made. Brands that use AI visual might have to accept a loss of ownership.
not sure i understand the vision behind this one pic.twitter.com/j1dM3Ms6WLFebruary 2, 2026
AI companies themselves have also been attacked with the tools they created. AI image generation means it's now easy for anyone to make a realistic-looking imitation of a brand campaign.
OpenAI's real-world minimalist slice-of-life billboards for ChatGPT were met with such confusion that an AI-generated parody shared online momentarily fooled everyone (above).
Everyone Hates Elon's anti-Tesla campaign
Tesla's reputation has taken a plunge over the last couple of years, partly because it designed a futuristic pick-up truck that keeps falling apart, and partly because its CEO is Elon Musk.
After the South African billionaire began expressing opinions on UK politics, the campaign group Everyone Hates Elon caught the moment with its anti-Tesla adverts, and disproved the would be Martian overload's claim that the UK was suppressing free speech. How warmly the ads were received showed how far the Tesla brand has fallen.
Meta AI Glasses
Everyone Hates Elon showed itself to be more than a very specific niche guerrilla group with its campaign against Meta. After the company brought in Kylie Jenner to show that people who aren't sexual predators could wear Meta AI Glasses, the group transformed its adverts to say what everyone was really thinking.
One intervention used an elaborate lenticular overlay that turned Jenner into a skull-faced alien from John Carpenter’s 1988 sci-fi horror They Live. Another poster taking on Meta's collaboration with Ray-Ban featured the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Meta Glasses are already being dubbed 'Pervert Glasses' in popular parlance.
Can real brands learn from subvertising campaigns? They should try to. Creative anti-advertising campaigns quickly go viral, and they can make a real impact. In a 2023 article published in Psychology and marketing, researchers Erik Maier and Alexander Mafael found that when a specific brand itself is targeted, brand perception, word‐of‐mouth and purchase intention are negatively affected.
Brands can start by holding real values and ensuring that messaging, visuals and campaigns align with them. Subvertising gains traction when it highlights real ethical problems.
Brands that address diversity, sustainability and fairness leave fewer openings for critique. But astroturfing, greenwashing, pinkwashing and any other kind of washing will get called out. Values need to be genuine and need to penetrate down to the product level.
