Aug 18th, 2005 by Jesse Moore
'Cause sometimes a piece of cardboard and a magic marker by themselves just aren't enough...
Bumvertising™, or the use of sign holding vagrants to advertise, is a development of PokerFaceBook.com's most recent advertising campaign. Homeless men are able to provide a valuable and tangible service to a company, while receiving an additional revenue stream in combination with their normal donations from begging. BUMVERTISING.COM
In case you were wondering where great ideas like these spawn from, this venture started in Seattle...
I surfed the site a little further and found that they had a message board. I loved the following comment entitled “Sign Me Up!” from Important Businessman:
“When someone thinks “toothless drunken urine-soaked derelict” I want their next thought to be my product or service. I have another idea, why don’t I have my company’s slogan scrawled in feces on sidewalks and subway walls?”
That has to be the funniest thing i have seen in quite some time. Boy what will they thing of next. I think an obivious company to advertise their product might be dove or dial soap.
Is it really that much different than the kid who dresses up like the cow @ “Spotted Cow” or the girl out in a lawn chair in LakeStevens holding the Verizon Wireless sign? I think its great that someone has found something for these people to do. If you don’t want your product advertised by a bum, don’t sign up. But frankly I don’t see anyone else with any good ideas for the homeless.
I admit its kinda silly, and I would not put my business name on a bum sign, but a visual is a visual. And if you go home and blog or call your friends or tell your wife about the Bum with the “Labor ready” Sign (sorry, that was probably bad) the sign has done its job. You remembered and passed the name along to someone else.
Interesting *cough* marketing concept. Doesn’t anyone else find it ironic that the “inventor” of this ad campaign is an online gambling company? I would think that the gambling institutions would want to stay away from homeless people… especially since gambling addictions can be a significant contributing factor/cause of losing ones home. To me, they are the “poster children” of what not to do. Just a thought.