Sandwich Boards Are So Passe

There's a show on HBO called Flight of the Conchords about a two-man music group from New Zealand trying to make it in New York. Struggling to make ends meet, one of the main characters, Bret, takes a job as a sign holder. Watching him hold a sign for hot dogs during an episode, I wondered what kind of response rate his sign got. I figured it must be pretty high since he's seen a steady stream of sign-holding work come his way in subsequent episodes.

But in the real world, businesses have become ever more eager to capture attention and gain sales, and it sounds like the old sandwich board advertising campaigns just aren't cutting it anymore. Surfing the NY Times website yesterday morning, I stumbled across this article about people being paid to advertise on their bodies. Yes, it appears we've upgraded from sandwich boards to human billboards.

To be honest, the article didn't really suprise me. I remember reading something about a guy who has agreed to sport a different company's t-shirt for each day for 2009 -- for a fee of course. But that's small beans compared to some of these stunts described in the article. Permanently tattooing a company's website across your forehead? For $10,000, Golden Palace Casino found someone to do just that.

I guess if you're looking to generate a buzz for your business, the old shock-and-awe routine is a really effective way to get people talking. If this human billboard trend keeps up, our friend Bret might just need to find a new line of work. That or get "hot dogs" tattooed somewhere.