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.)
Natural Disasters
I think any way of hiring a homeless person should be a good thing. I am sure they do not get paid that well for having a sign at the bottom, it’s not like they get paid by the hour (they only get $1-$5 a day plus sandwich and bottle of water for advertising all day long in extreme weather conditions, making a lousy 5 cents an hour to 25 cents per hour, wow, BIG MONEY)…
Now the panhandler is less likely to get spare change from passer-bys as it looks as though they have a “job” advertising (they may actually make less money than before), this was the case with “panners” that sold the “Spare Changes” or “Street News” type newspapers (they could get much more money begging without selling papers).
What I think bumvertisments should do is make it so that if the agency used all 4 sides of a panhandlers sign (maybe even the backside), they panhandler should have an oppritunity to least make close to minimum wage (aprox $6/hr), that’s about a $1.00 per ad per hour (monitor their progress by having them panhandle near live webcam in city). This would be enuough income generated so that the homeless person could actually get a cheap hotel for the night so they can sleep well and clean up for the next day of work. Giving a panhandler $1-5 dollars for a long days work is not helping, that will not even cover breakfast the following morning! Maybe give/rent these homeless people warm jackets (or t-shirts for hot climate) to wear that will allow more advertising on the back and front too (will help homeless stay warm). This advertising agency should be trying to make the homeless people NON-HOMLESS, by offering an actual wage for the “full package ad pack”, these homeless people could get off the streets and become employees (on contract) rather than helpless & homeless (this would lessen the controversy of the agency too, they could probably even get grants and hold fund raisers to help the cause)…
http://www.SpareSomeChange.com is the homeless search engine (poverty link portal) I made.