I just wrote over 1000 words describing a series of tweets and blog posts by Paddy Johnson of Art Fag City and Marc Schiller of Wooster Collective without even getting to my thoughts on those events, but I realized that it was kind of boring and pointless. If you want to know the full story behind what I have to say now, you can read it yourself. In short, there was controversy surrounding the possibility that Marc Schiller was doing marketing for Exit Through The Gift Shop and using his twitter and Wooster as part of the marketing campaign.
The end result of all this back and forth? Yes, Marc is helping with the marketing for the film. Wooster Collective has supported Banksy for years and Marc’s day job is in marketing, so it kind of makes sense. But Marc isn’t getting paid for his work. Nonetheless, he didn’t ever make it clear on the Wooster Collective website that he was part of the film’s marketing team (to be fair, it wasn’t a secret and he would tell you his involvement if you asked, but he wasn’t volunteering the information to all of Wooster Collective’s readers).
After initially being upset (particularly because he commented on my post about Banksy’s marketing efforts for Exit Through The Gift Shop without mentioning his own involvement) and then speaking with Marc about the situation, my take is that as a reader of Wooster Collective, my trust was betrayed. On Vandalog, Wooster Collective and just about every other blog in the world, there are times when we post about our friends or other things like that, and it would be impossible to declare every possible conflict of interest. In this particular case though, I feel very strongly that Marc and Sara should have simply noted once or twice on their blog that they are officially helping with the marketing efforts of Exit Through The Gift Shop.
I still enjoy reading Wooster Collective and I think that they are the most important street art blog in the world today (so don’t stop reading Wooster just because of this, and if you don’t read it now, please start reading), but in this one instance, I was disappointed and I just wish they had been more straightforward with their readers.