That the entire advertising industry is caught up in the midst of some sort of knee jerk reaction to all those 'death of the 30 second commercial / traditional advertising' grievances that have been doing the rounds (to death, some would say) is no secret. Ever since marketers woke up to those advertisement skipping devices like DVRs, TiVos, iPods, Pop-up Blockers, Bit Torrent TV, pirate radio file sharing and what have you, it's only natural that they're now scurrying around looking for
more innovative ways to make their brands connect with consumers.
Up until not so long ago, the term marketing innovation' was restricted to resorting to tactics like handheld banners (remember the Ford, HSBC, DNA banners held by humans on Mahim Causeway and Marine Drive in Mumbai?), zeppelins (Goodyear, Kodak and Fuji come to mind here), false magazine (and sometimes newspaper - remember indya.com taking over the front
page of The Times of India?) covers, pop-up/out ads, unusual (read shiny, glittery, in the shape of the actual product) POP material, 120-second commercials, branding in bathrooms, large stickers on the floors of supermarkets, malls and pavements, branded kiosks, and stickers on buses, trains, and whatever else they could get their hands on.
For those of you who still believe that the above make good for 'marketing innovations', wake up and smell the buzz. All these "innovations" are passé. As passé in fact, as backlit billboards and branded Styrofoam glasses. They might be 'fabulous' or 'perfect'in terms of brand visibility, but 'innovations', they certainly are not. Inflatable billboards are cute, get the eye-balls, and have perked up quite a bit of interest, but do justice only to a very restricted number of product categories.
What has caught a lot of eye-balls recently, and seems to be the latest rage as far as marketing innovations in the West, seems to be a phenomenon dubbed as Bodyadvertising'. Simply put, Bodyadvertising is when a brand pays an individual or individual X amount of money to paint, tattoo or stick a brand or brand message on a visible and exposed part of his or her body.
