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“These advertisements are in contravention of the Graffiti Management By-law. As the investigation is ongoing and a resolution is pending, no information about enforcement can be provided.”

The NCC said it had removed 10 of the ads from its property.

Similar ads appeared in Halifax and Edmonton, although those didn’t appear to have raised as much kerfuffle as they did in Ottawa.

Guerrilla marketing campaigns like Disney’s must tread a fine line, said Theresa Forman, president of McMillan, an Ottawa creative agency with its office on Sussex Drive. Forman arrived at work Wednesday to find one of the ads spray-painted outside her doorstep. It has since been removed.

Forman thinks The Lion King campaign missed its mark. People “are ticked with Disney,” she said.

“We’ve had some healthy debate about this internally. Some said, ‘No press is bad press,’ but I think you have to be really, really careful. Guerrilla marketing can be super successful or it can be a disaster,” she said.

Some guerrilla campaigns are harmless and far more clever than The Lion King one, she said. A few years ago, an ad company painted one line of crosswalks a brilliant gleaming white. The client? Mr. Clean, whose smiling, bald-headed pitchman was stencilled discreetly on the pavement.

People would be more forgiving if it were a charity behind such a graffiti ad campaign because everyone would know it didn’t have a lot of money to get its message out.