The BadAds Weblog

More Ads for People on the Go

Ads at the bottoms of urinals. Video ads above hand dryers in restrooms. Port-a-potties with ads plastered on the doors. And now, the latest in the trend of reaching captive consumers on the go: Promo-Can.

According to the Press-Enterprise in Riverside, California, Lawrence and Sally Wieringa have the dubious honor of having invented a cylindrical portable toilet with interior and exterior advertising.

According to the product specs, "The Promo-Can could be event specific, a most effective way to advertise within a controlled environment with exactly the demographics advertisers are looking for." Look at that, you're not just someone who needs to use the loo--you're a target market!

Since the product is not yet on the market, you probably won't be exposed to ads during your most private moments anytime soon. But we'll keep an eye on this trend and let you know if and when advertisers buy into the act.

(Thanks to Alain Jourdier for this tip.)

December 20, 2001

Ads Under Your Feet

In an effort to make sure consumers see ads wherever they look, marketers have started drawing ads on the sidewalks with chalk. Though these ads are meant to look like grassroots advertising, they're actually commissioned by such corporate behemoths as Coca-Cola.

The company that's responsible for putting ads under your feet is MassiveMedia. You can contact them here:

Robert Rukstalis
rob@massivemediainc.com
917-807-4638

Two of the companies that are adding to the ad clutter in your city are Coca-Cola's PowerADE and Cosmo.com. You can contact them here:

Coca-Cola's PowerADE
1-800-343-0341
Online Feedback Form
(We recommend that you don't enter your real e-mail address in this form. Use a throwaway account like a Hotmail address instead.)

Cosmo.com
Feedback@cosmo.com

December 17, 2001

Sales Pitch Society

Thus writes Kate Kaye of The Lowbrow Lowdown:

Forget the Tupperware parties, forget your Amway-hawking coworker, forget the guy who wanted to sell his kid's name to some corporation: the new human ad phenomenon takes word-of-mouth marketing and product endorsement to a whole new level.

Today, there are sponsored college students groveling for the chance to spread corporate messages to fellow frosh in exchange for tuition payments. There are brides-to-be setting their friends and family up as marketing targets in misguided attempts at reducing the cost of those all-important wedding videos and floral arrangements. There are nightclub goers initiating seemingly innocent conversations with smokers to get them to switch cigarette brands; all the while being paid to do so. There are huge corporations who are no longer satisfied with word-of-mouth promotion occurring naturally. Now, they're triggering buzz by purposely integrating person-to-person marketing strategies into campaigns. The outcome of these promo prompts depends as much on us corrupting our personal relationships with marketing messages as it does on the expertise of the ad agency's creative team.

Kate has written a very interesting piece on this topic called Sales Pitch Society. You can download the PDF version for free.

Also, here's something that may amuse those who hate intrusive ads and the companies that bombard us with them: the free game Brick-a-Brand, which is just like the old video game Breakout but instead of destroying plain old bricks, you destroy brands like Coca-Cola and Shell.

December 12, 2001

Movie M(ad)ness

Movie theaters took advantage of the hype surrounding the new Harry Potter movie to bombard moviegoers with up to six commercials before each screening. It adds insult to injury to be forced to watch a slew of commercials after shelling out $20 for a ticket and overpriced snacks.

Consumer action works. Disney, for example, doesn't allow commercials to be shown before its movies because of consumer complaints.

The BadAds site has a Movies page with the contact information for every large cinema chain. If your local theater shows ads, you can look them up on this page and send them a letter.

You can also visit the Stop Pre-Movie Ads Web site. The owner endeavors to create a comprehensive list of theaters that DON'T show ads before movies. You can help by submitting your local ad-free theaters.

Don't forget to CC us on your letters for the chance to win a snazzy ad-free, logo-free BadAds T-shirt!

December 7, 2001

Student Info for Sale

The following is excerpted from the article "College-Survey Firm Quietly Peddles Student Information to Big Marketer," by Daniel Golden of the Wall Street Journal. Contact information for American Student List LLC and the National Research Center for College and University Admissions is at the end of this message.

*****

Each year, more than one million U.S. high-school students take time out of their school day to fill out a survey asking their names, addresses, grade-point averages, races, religions and social views. The organization that sponsors the survey, the National Research Center for College and University Admissions, tells the schools it will broaden students' higher-education options by distributing their names and profiles to hundreds of colleges and universities across the country.

But colleges aren't the only recipients of the survey results. Generally unknown to high schools, colleges, students and their parents, National Research for at least a decade has also sold the personal information it gathers to the country's leading supplier of young people's names to commercial marketers, American Student List LLC.

American Student List pays for the information by helping to fund the National Research survey. American Student List then sells student names and other information to companies that solicit students for a wide array of goods and services. Companies that buy student names from American Student List include shaving giant Gillette Co.; credit-card purveyors American Express Co. and Capital One Financial Corp.; Kaplan Inc., the Washington Post Co. unit that is the largest admissions test-coaching chain; Primedia Inc.'s Seventeen Magazine; and Columbia House Record Club, which is owned by AOL Time Warner Inc. and Sony Corp.

Huge Influence

From its base in Lee's Summit, Mo., National Research -- a little-known company with just 30 employees -- has become a hugely influential force in a burgeoning industry surrounding college admissions in which companies and colleges buy names and detailed information about young people. Publicly presenting itself as a service to students and colleges, National Research doesn't readily disclose its role in helping commercial marketers pitch their products to an impressionable and highly valued audience.

Marketers obtain teenagers' names and addresses from many other sources, such as magazine-subscription lists and Web sites. What distinguishes National Research is that it gathers student names in a classroom survey that many school officials believe will be made available only to educational institutions, but which then is sold to commercial marketers.

National Research has also made its presence widely felt as it competes with the influential College Board to sell student information to colleges and as it lobbies Congress to kill legislation that would restrict collection of some student information.

Many teachers and educational officials express anger and disbelief when told that National Research sells student names to commercial marketers. "It's so disgusting," says Barbara Henry, admissions director at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, which buys student information from National Research. "Everybody's upset when their children are solicited" without parental approval.

*****

What you can do: Please contact Don Munce, President of the National Research Center for College and University Admissions, at don@nrccua.org. You can also contact American Student List LLC at sales@studentlist.com.

December 5, 2001

Naming Rights–and Wrongs

Safeco Field. 3Com Park. Pepsi Arena. FedEx Field.

Sadly, we've become used to corporations buying the naming rights to sports stadiums. But now, the trend has reached the elementary school level: An elementary school gym has sold its naming rights, and the ShopRite of Brooklawn (N.J.) Gymnasium will open next fall, taking its name in exchange for $100,000 from a supermarket.

What's next? Will Coca-Cola buy the naming rights to your local church?

Please contact ShopRite and let them know that this trend has gone too far. It may also help to contact the New Jersey school associations.

1-800-746-7748
PO Box 7812
Edison, NJ 08818
Online Feedback Form

New Jersey Association of School Administrators
920 West State Street
Trenton, NJ 08618
609-599-2900
Fax: 609-599-9359
Executive Director: Mr. James H. Murphy
jmurphy@njasa.net

New Jersey School Boards Association
P. O. Box 909
Trenton, NJ 08605-0909
Phone: 609-695-7600
Fax: 609-695-0413
Executive Director: Edwina M. Lee
elee@njsba.org

December 3, 2001

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