July 13, 2026
When a brand runs a wheatpaste campaign in multiple countries, the creative challenge is only half the job. The other half — the part that determines whether the client renews the relationship or questions the entire spend — is documentation. Proof of posting is the paper trail that connects an installation crew at 4am in Shoreditch to a brand manager reviewing campaign results in a New York conference room at 10am. When that chain is broken, the campaign might as well not have happened.
Over a decade of running street-level campaigns across domestic and international markets, American Guerrilla Marketing field operators have learned that documentation standards are not universal. What satisfies a US direct-to-consumer brand is not the same as what a European fashion house needs for internal media accounting. What a local operator in Mexico City considers “complete” documentation may fall short of what a streaming platform’s marketing team requires before they can issue a campaign summary to their VP. The gap between those expectations — and how you close it before installation day — is what this piece is about.
A professional proof-of-posting report is not a folder of photos dropped into a shared drive. Done correctly, it is a structured document that answers every question a brand manager, media buyer, or internal finance team might ask about where the campaign ran and how it was executed. Here is what every professional report includes, regardless of market:
The timestamp should be accurate to the minute, not the day. “July 5th” is not a timestamp. “July 5, 2026 — 04:22 local time / 23:22 EDT (July 4)” is. For international campaigns, the timestamp should always include both local time and the client’s home time zone. This matters when a brand manager needs to confirm that material went up before a specific press window, a concert date, or a product launch.
GPS-tagged photos are the standard. American Guerrilla Marketing field operators are instructed to ensure location services are enabled before photographing installations. The coordinates should resolve to a real address when entered into Google Maps or any standard mapping tool. “Near Brick Lane” is not acceptable. The actual coordinates of the wall where the material was placed are required.
For report formatting, include both the decimal format (51.5204, -0.0718) and a linked map pin. Clients who are unfamiliar with the neighborhood can see exactly where the poster appeared without needing to be London locals.
The photo must show the material on the surface, in context, legible. A close-up that cuts off the surroundings is not useful for a client trying to assess placement quality. The photo should show enough of the environment that someone unfamiliar with the location can understand the surface type, the foot traffic context, and the visual prominence of the placement.
For large formats — anything over 24×36 inches — include both a close-up and a step-back shot. The close-up confirms the material; the step-back shot communicates the visual impact. Both belong in the report.
The surface description is a brief note: wall type (brick, painted concrete, plywood, metal panel), ownership category (private property with permission, permissioned construction hoarding, authorized posting zone), and any relevant notes about condition or visibility. This matters for media accounting — a poster placed at eye level on a high-foot-traffic corner in Roma Norte is a different media placement than a poster placed above a doorway in a low-traffic alley.
Document the format (24×36 inches, A1, B1, etc.) and the quantity placed at that specific location. If a crew placed three posters on the same wall as part of a cluster, note that. Quantity per location feeds into the total spot count, which is the number that matters for media accounting purposes.
For accountability and for any follow-up needed, each entry in the report should include the operator’s name or crew code. This is internal information and is not always client-facing, but it is essential for internal record-keeping and for resolving any disputes about where material was or was not placed.
The US expectation is the baseline: reports delivered within 24 hours of installation, organized by location, with GPS-tagged photos. That is the standard that American Guerrilla Marketing built its documentation process around, and it is what clients hiring us for domestic campaigns receive.
International markets add layers of complexity that most brands — and some agencies — do not anticipate until they are already in the middle of a campaign.
London-based campaigns run on Greenwich Mean Time or British Summer Time, which is 5 to 6 hours ahead of New York depending on the time of year. An installation crew working in Shoreditch or Brick Lane at 4am GMT is finishing their work before midnight in New York. That sounds like a documentation advantage — the work is done early — but it is actually a window management problem.
UK operators work on UK schedules. The documentation they produce after a 4am installation is typically submitted by mid-morning GMT, which is 5 to 6am New York time. If the client expects a report on their desk by 9am New York time, that is possible — but only if the expectation is communicated explicitly in the brief before the campaign launches. If the brief says “24-hour delivery” and the operator interprets that as 24 hours from their local morning, the client may not receive documentation until the following afternoon New York time.
The fix is straightforward: specify documentation delivery in terms of the client’s time zone, not the operator’s. “Documentation delivered by 8am EDT” is a clear instruction. “Documentation within 24 hours” is not.
Mexico City operates on Central Standard Time, one hour behind New York for most of the year (with some variation due to Mexico’s daylight saving time schedule, which does not always align with the US calendar). Campaigns in Roma Norte, Condesa, or Centro Histórico are in a more favorable time zone overlap from a documentation standpoint — a 4am CST installation is finishing at 5am EDT, leaving several hours before the New York business day opens.
The challenge in Mexico City is not time zone math — it is infrastructure and connectivity. Operators in some areas of the city work in neighborhoods where cellular connectivity can be inconsistent in the early morning hours. GPS tagging requires a data signal. Photographs taken offline may not include GPS metadata automatically. The brief for a CDMX campaign should specify whether operators are expected to confirm GPS data manually if the automatic tagging fails.
When a campaign runs in New York, London, and Mexico City simultaneously — or on a rolling schedule — the client does not want three separate reports in three different formats. They want one organized package.
American Guerrilla Marketing builds its multi-market documentation into a single client-facing report organized by market, then by neighborhood, then by individual placement. The structure looks like this:
The goal is that a brand manager can open one PDF or shared link, understand the full campaign footprint, and have everything they need for internal presentation or media accounting sign-off — without needing to chase down additional files or ask follow-up questions.
Documentation quality is a function of brief quality. If you want GPS-tagged photos, timestamp formats that include time zone conversions, surface descriptions, and same-day delivery — all of that needs to be in the brief before the campaign launches. Assuming operators will know your standard without being told is one of the most common mistakes brands and agencies make on international campaigns.
A documentation requirements section in the campaign brief should specify:
AGM provides a documentation brief template to clients running multi-market campaigns. When operators across three markets are briefed on the same standard, the consolidation process at the back end is straightforward. When operators are briefed inconsistently, the campaign manager ends up spending hours chasing down missing data from different markets — which adds cost and delays the client report.
These are two different documents serving two different audiences, and conflating them is a common mistake.
Internal documentation is the raw operational record. It includes everything: GPS coordinates in decimal and degree formats, timestamped file names, operator notes about surface conditions, crew codes, and any notes about placements that were adjusted from the original plan. This is the document that lives in the campaign folder and gets referenced if a client questions a placement three weeks later, or if a follow-up survey is needed.
Internal documentation is dense. It is not designed to be presented to a client. It is designed to be complete.
Media accounting reports are designed for finance teams, brand managers, and anyone who needs to justify the spend on a street marketing campaign against internal budgeting processes. They are clean, formatted, and summary-oriented. The GPS data is present but presented as map pins, not raw coordinates. The timestamps are simplified. The spot count is front and center.
For brands that need to present street marketing spend to a CMO, CFO, or legal/compliance team, the media accounting report is the document that does that work. It needs to look professional, be easy to scan, and answer the question “did this campaign run as planned?” with a clear yes — backed by evidence.
American Guerrilla Marketing produces both for multi-market campaigns. The internal documentation is retained for operational records. The client receives the media accounting report formatted for their internal needs.
Before any international wheatpaste campaign launches, confirm that the following are in place:
American Guerrilla Marketing operates as the single coordinating contact for multi-market campaigns. That means we are not passing the documentation responsibility to each local operator independently. We brief every operator to AGM’s standard, collect documentation from all markets, and compile the client-facing report ourselves.
We have spent over a decade building the systems that make this work at scale. Our field operators — whether they are our certified and licensed operators in New York and other US markets, or our vetted partners in London, Mexico City, or Paris — are trained on the same documentation protocol. GPS-tagged photos, timestamped to the minute, with surface descriptions and quantity confirmations. That standard does not change because the campaign is running in Brick Lane instead of Williamsburg.
For a campaign running simultaneously in New York and London, here is what that looks like operationally:
This sequence works because every step is planned before installation day. The operators know what they need to submit and when. The timeline is built backwards from the client’s deadline. Nothing is left to “we’ll figure it out after the campaign runs.”
Even on well-run campaigns, documentation occasionally arrives late. The cause is almost always one of three things: connectivity problems, operator oversight, or a placement that required adjustment and created a documentation gap. Here is how to handle each:
If an operator is working in an area with poor cellular signal, GPS tagging may fail and photos may not upload to the shared drive until the operator moves to a connected area. The fix: operators should photograph every placement regardless of connectivity, then upload the full batch once they have a signal. AGM’s brief instructs operators to add a manual note if connectivity prevented real-time submission, so the campaign manager knows to expect a batch submission.
A rushed operator may forget to photograph a placement, especially late in a long installation session. This is caught at the review stage when the spot count in the documentation doesn’t match the expected count from the brief. The campaign manager contacts the operator, who either confirms the placement with a follow-up photo taken that day or documents it as a missed placement. Client reporting is adjusted accordingly.
Sometimes a planned location is not usable on installation day — the wall is wet, a surface was removed, a property owner has revoked permission. When a placement is substituted, the documentation needs to reflect the actual location, not the planned one. AGM’s brief requires operators to flag all substitutions and document the replacement location to the same standard as any planned placement.
When documentation is delayed, the first obligation is to the client: notify them proactively. “We’re following up with the London team on three placements and will have the complete report by 2pm EDT” is a better message than silence followed by a late report with no explanation.
Street marketing spend is not always the easiest line item to justify internally. Unlike a digital ad buy with a dashboard and impression counts, a wheatpaste campaign produces physical placements in physical locations. For a brand manager who needs to present the campaign to a CMO, a VP of marketing, or a finance review, the proof-of-posting documentation is the campaign’s receipts.
Without it, the spend is difficult to defend. With it — GPS-tagged photos, timestamps, spot counts, map views — the campaign becomes a tangible, verifiable piece of the marketing record. We have seen firsthand how a well-documented street campaign becomes a case study within a brand’s marketing team, and how a poorly documented one becomes a reason to not run street again.
The documentation is not the campaign. But it is what the campaign becomes once the paste dries and the posters are up. For brands that operate in environments requiring internal sign-off on marketing spend — public companies, large entertainment companies, brands with compliance requirements — documentation is not optional. It is the standard.
Documentation is what turns a street campaign into a media record. For brands that need to justify spend internally, it is not a bonus — it is the deliverable.
American Guerrilla Marketing coordinates wheatpaste campaigns across the US and international markets from a single New York contact.
A professional proof-of-posting report should include GPS coordinates, a timestamp accurate to the minute, at least one photo of the posted material in context, a surface description (wall type, material, ownership category), the format and quantity placed, and the operator’s name or crew identifier. For international campaigns, the report should also note the local time and convert to the client’s home time zone.
US brands typically expect documentation within 24 hours of installation. For campaigns in London or Mexico City, AGM sets pre-agreed delivery windows before the campaign launches — usually within 12 hours of the installation completing, regardless of the time zone. Documentation for a 4am London installation should be in the client’s inbox before the New York business day opens.
AGM builds redundancy into international campaigns. Every operator is briefed on documentation standards before activation. If documentation is delayed, AGM follows an escalation protocol: first contact the operator directly, then request secondary confirmation from a local field supervisor, and — if needed — dispatch a verification team to photograph installed material. Clients are notified proactively, not reactively.
Internal documentation is detailed and raw — full GPS data, timestamped file names, operator notes. Agency media accounting reports are formatted for finance and legal sign-off: clean summaries, certified spot counts, and a master location list organized by market. The underlying data is the same; the presentation is tailored to the audience.
Yes. AGM serves as the single coordinating contact for multi-market campaigns and consolidates documentation from all markets into one client-facing report. Whether the campaign ran in New York, London, and Mexico City simultaneously or on a rolling schedule, the client receives one organized package with all GPS-tagged photos, timestamps, and location summaries.
American Guerrilla Marketing coordinates wheatpaste campaigns across the US and international markets from a single New York contact.
Millie Phillips
Campaign Architect — American Guerrilla Marketing
Email: [email protected]
Office: (646) 776-2770
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American Guerrilla Marketing — Los Angeles
Street-level campaigns in Los Angeles and nationwide. Wheatpasting, LED trucks, street teams, and more.
(646) 776-2770
July 13, 2026
July 13, 2026
July 13, 2026
July 13, 2026
July 13, 2026
