Although Designorati officially launched to quite a bit of fanfare and a little help from our friends, I have to wonder if we could benefit from a little bumvertising.
Indeed, between the proliferation of sign-weilding homeless at highway off-ramps and the abundance of .Coms in major American cities, thousands of eyes could fall upon an advertising slogan—even if the signs were changed every hour to rotate advertisers. At only US$1-5 a day, the smallest website or blog could easily afford incredible exposure, and those holding the signs could clean up—figuratively and literally.
The Register reports:
A US net entrepreneur has solved his lack of advertising budget problem by paying beggars to stand motionless beside Seattle Highway exit ramps with ads proclaiming his wares, the Seattle Post Intelligencer reports.
Ben Rogovy, 22, wanted to promote his website for poker fans, but was a bit short in the wonga department. Inspiration struck, however, when he was looking at a cardboard sign commonly held by bums hoping for a hand-out beside the city’s freeway exits.
Rogovy explained: “So much traffic goes by these sign holders, I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if they could advertise themselves and me at the same time?’ ”
Rogovy now has around 12 vagrants “Bumvertising” his site. He pays them “a bit of food and water, plus $1 to $5, according to each beggar’s relative value, based largely on traffic patterns”.
Rogovy admitted: “I am fascinated by these people, out there from dawn to dusk. Some of them were working longer days than I was.”
Here in Portland, Oregon (Seattle’s groovier neighbor just to the south), every highway off-ramp sports homeless—some legitimately down on ther luck, some wearing $150 sneakers and watches better than mine—standing in shifts (you can see them change shifts, passing the signs between early-shift-bum and afternoon-shift-bum at 14:30 Pacific Time). They hold up cardboard signs with tons of wasted space. In the hands of a professional designer, those signs could be made to include any advertising slogan.
It could be the best advertising system since Google AdSense!
Hmm…
(I’m kidding, of course. Although the Register story is legit.)
