Volkswagen celebrates contemporary art for everybody in Canada within its ‘Volkswagen Heist’ initiative. Starting October, pop-up ‘Performance Art’ galleries began to appear in major cities across Canada.

Photo: from Volkswagen’s Facebook page

The outdoor exhibits feature limited edition, hand-numbered, framed long-exposure light painting photographs created by the 200-horsepower Jetta GLI.

The smart marketing campaign plays with human wish to own material objects. The frames with photographs are hung so that everybody can steal them. VW encourages people to take a piece of art to their homes, hang it on the walls, make a photo of it and upload to the automaker’s Facebook page. There are already numerous photos from fans decorating homes and offices with the imagery hanging on Facebook.

The campaign was created by Red Urban Canada. The agency also developed a Facebook app that enabled the 350,000 plus fan base help select the script, car, cast, music and edit for the final chapter of VW Golf campaign.

“The idea for the entire GLI campaign was ‘Driving can be beautiful.’ And from what we‘ve already seen, it’s beautiful enough for people to plunder for their living room wall,” said Steve Carli, President of Red Urban Canada.

This year’s VW ad campaign in China ‘The People’s Car Project’ that invited people on the street to submit their ideas of what would make the ultimate new people’s car has recieved ‘Most Valuable PR Communications Campaign 2011’ at the Media China Branding & Marketing Awards.