Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - S8E02 - Wacky Ad Spaces

Episode Date: January 10, 2019

This week on Under The Influence, we look at unusual and unexpected advertising placements. As the world of marketing gets more and more cluttered every day, it’s forcing advertisers to get creative. From urinals and sheep to foreheads and armpits, welcome to the world of wacky ad spaces. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus. They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them. Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s. I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh. I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,

who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion, who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such a success. And please do me a favor, follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan. You just have to love storytelling. Subscribe now and don't miss a single beat. In case nobody's told you, weight loss goes beyond the old just eat less and move more narrative. And that's where Felix comes in. Felix is redefining weight loss for Canadians with a smarter, more personalized approach to help you crush your health goals this year.

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Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. From the Under the Influence digital box set, this episode is from Season 8, 2019. You're so keen in it. You're going to love it in an instant. Your teeth look whiter than no, no, no. You're not you when you're hungry. You're a good hand with all things.

You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly. McDonald's has over 35,000 locations around the world. One of the keys to its massive success is its never-wavering consistency. When the McDonald brothers created their innovative food preparation system, they hit on the notion of standardizing and streamlining every step. It was that incredible consistency that attracted Ray Kroc to invest in the business and eventually take it worldwide. While consistency was the key, there is one aspect of McDonald's that is somewhat unexpected. And that is the handful of McDonald's locations in unusual places. For example, in New Zealand,

there is a McDonald's location in a decommissioned DC-3 airliner. The jet was built in 1943 and was flown by New Zealand's South Pacific Airlines in the 1960s. When decommissioned many years later, it was parked on a property in New Zealand. That property was eventually purchased by a McDonald's franchisee and she decided to make use of the plane. It has been painted in McDonald's signature colors and branded with the word McDonald's on the sides.

Customers enter the plane through stairs near the tail and are welcome to take pictures of the original cockpit, which is guarded behind glass doors. It is a highly unusual McDonald's location and the only one of its kind in the world. Another unexpected place for a McDonald's is Windsor Castle in England. Or shall I say, on the property of Windsor Castle.

Back in 2008, the Crown Estate, which administers the Queen's real estate portfolio, purchased a retail park just outside the castle. That retail park contained a McDonald's restaurant.

So now Queen Elizabeth can look out the window and inspect the amount of traffic at her drive-thru McD's location. Or she can send down for a happy meal. After all, she's a busy lady. But maybe one of the most unexpected McDonald's locations is in the Czech Republic. It is located right below a certain museum there, the Museum of Communism. It's dedicated to communist-era censorship, propaganda, and repression. And on some of its signs, the Museum of Communism lists its address as, quote,

right above McDonald's. Which is such sweet irony, because McDonald's is the poster child for capitalism. Just as McDonald's occasionally shows up in unexpected places, so too does the world of advertising. As a matter of fact, as the world of advertising gets more and more cluttered every day, it is forcing brands to seek out more and more unusual places to put their messages, hoping that the surprising ad in an unexpected place will cut through the clutter. And in that pursuit, no place is sacred these days. hoping that the surprising ad in an unexpected place will cut through the clutter.

And in that pursuit, no place is sacred these days. From urinals and sheep to foreheads and armpits, welcome to the wacky world of unexpected advertising spaces. You're under the influence. Advertisers have one main goal. To sell products and services. In order to do that that they have to create advertising that people notice and act on and in order to achieve that advertisers have to try unusual tactics to break through the massive advertising

clutter that has led to what the marketing industry calls ambient advertising ambient advertising is defined as placing ads on unusual items or in unusual places and some of those unexpected places may surprise you not long ago British travel booking site the train line comm was looking for a way to promote their business. The company claims to save passengers an average of 43% on rail tickets. The majority of travelers buy their tickets at the station, so their best strategy was to shepherd existing passengers over to their site. To do that, they partnered up with an ad agency and came up with an unorthodox strategy.

Their idea was to advertise on sheep. Use to be specific. You see, many train trips in the UK involve long stretches of countryside, and passing herds of grazing sheep along the way comes with the territory. So, thetrainline.com launched the first Lambient advertising campaign by putting branded ponchos onto sheep along one train line to Gatwick Airport. The ponchos read, thetrainline.com, 43%. The accompanying TV and billboard campaign featured 40 sheep trained to step in and out of trains and even read newspapers. Are you still paying full price for your ticket at the station on the day?

People buying in advance at thetrainline.com saved an average of 43%. The idea got thetrainline.com a lot of free publicity. And it got the sheep a lot of attention. As one farmer who loaned his sheep for the ad said, I just hope my ewes don't

start turning into divas. In Brazil, men discovered an ad in a very unusual place. When they walked into washrooms there, they saw a green deodorizer pad in the urinals. Sitting on top of the green pads were tiny plastic soccer nets that made the green pads look like a miniature soccer field. And there, also on the pad, was a miniature soccer ball. And because men loved to aim at things, they could push the ball around the urinal and try and steer the ball into the net.

Just above the urinal was a sign that said, Soccer is good everywhere, but much better on ESPN. Back in 2007, McDonald's found a highly unexpected place to advertise. On report cards. McDonald's struck a deal with the school board in Seminole County, Florida. That deal allowed McDonald's to pick up the $1,600 cost of printing the report card jackets in return for the placement of a Happy Meal coupon on the report card's cover. With 27,000 kids taking the report cards home to be signed three or four times a year,

it translated into big exposure for McDonald's. On top of that, McDonald's added an incentive. Students who earned all A's and B's, had two or fewer absences, or exhibited good behavior, were entitled to a free Happy Meal, as long as they presented their report card at the counter. There was pushback, as you can imagine. While McDonald's maintained it doesn't advertise in schools, the report card ad still ruffled feathers. The director of an organization named the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood called the ad a new low because it bypassed parents and targeted children directly,

telling them doing well in school should be rewarded with a happy meal. Yet, advertising fast food rewards for scholastic achievements has a long history. Pizza Hut's Book It program is aimed at elementary and preschool children as well. It's an incentive program to get kids to read books. Those who met monthly reading goals were entitled to a free one-topping personal pizza each month. According to Pizza Hut, over 14 million students have participated. Pizza Hut's Book It program has been running for over 35 years. The key to ambient advertising, as you can glean,

is to show up in the most unusual place possible and harness the element of surprise. Everyone knows ketchup pours very slowly. And one way to speed up the process before your fries get cold is to smack the bottom of the ketchup bottle. Well, a company called Dressing for Pleasure, which specializes in fetish wear and all things S&M related, looked at ketchup bottles and saw a marketing opportunity. So they put stickers of shapely derrieres

wearing their fetish clothing on the bottoms of ketchup bottles with words like, harder, do it again, and spare no mercy, along with their store name and website. It got the fetish shop a lot of attention. After all, it was the very definition of an ambient marketing idea.

Unexpected, surprising, and cheeky. In the last few years, food companies have begun selling space on their fruit and vegetables. Back in 2015, Universal Pictures came out with its latest film, Minions, an animated spin-off of the Despicable Me franchise about tiny yellow creatures called Minions. To market the movie, Universal made an unexpected partnership with Chiquita Bananas. More specifically, Chiquita Banana Fruit Stickers. Fruit Stickers have been around since the 1990s, created with the sole purpose of expediting the checkout process.

Each individual fruit has its own sticker containing a price lookup code for easy scanning. While most of us simply see them as something to peel off before taking a bite, Universal saw an opportunity to create minion-themed fruit stickers. The partnership made sense as minions are yellow and one of the main character's favorite words is banana. Each sticker would feature a different Minions character. Customers could download the Chiquita Fan Fund app and scan one of the 32 different stickers for instant access to games,

prizes, and even Minion-themed banana recipes. Minions took home over $1 billion at the box office with many thanks to bananas. That's the power of an appealing idea. But scan stickers aren't the only way companies are advertising on food today. Fruit stickers in some parts of Europe are being replaced by lasers. Yes, fruit and vegetable suppliers are now using lasers to etch words and logos onto produce. In an effort to reduce the amount of plastic in landfills,

the laser pierces only the outermost layer of, say, a sweet potato or avocado's skin, without affecting shelf life, thus eliminating the need for stickers, tags, or packaging. But the laser opportunities don't stop at produce. In 2013, design company IDEO had words laser etched into a ribeye steak to promote their web series. And restaurant chains Sonic, Umami Burger, and BurgerFi all brand their burgers by burning their logos right into the buns. While it may seem a bit jarring to see a logo lasered onto your ribeye steak, it is 100% edible branding that's easy on the environment. Food for thought.

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charge betmgm operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Every year, the New York International Auto Show is held at the Javits Convention Center in New York. It is one of the largest auto shows in North America and has been running annually since the year 1900. At that show recently, Audi wanted to promote its new A4 model

to the one million people who attend the event. But the carmaker wanted a surprising way to reach those potential car buyers. And it came up with this unexpected idea. As you may know, it's often hard to get a signal on your smartphone

when you are in big convention centers. Too much interference, zero bars on your phone. So car shows usually provide visitors with a free Wi-Fi network they can jump onto while there. That's where Audi saw an opportunity. It offered to sponsor the Wi-Fi. So when people went to their smartphone settings to log on to the Wi-Fi, they saw that the Auto Show Wi-Fi was named, quote, 328 reasons to choose A4. Then you could choose a network from dozens of options, each labeled with a feature of the A4.

The name of Wi-Fi network number one was, quote, A4 has more horsepower than 328i. The name of Wi-Fi network number two was called A4 more torque than 328i. Both were direct shots at competitor BMW. Another network was called A4 has CarPlay. And so on. Every time car shoppers logged on to the car show Wi-Fi, they were given yet another reason to buy an Audi A4. And over the course of the three-day event, they saw 328 reasons in total.

And imagine for a moment if you were a competitor of Audi and you had to log on to that Wi-Fi network every day of the car show. Imagine if you were BMW. Sponsoring the Wi-Fi. Such an unexpected marketing idea. Surprise creates impact. Have you ever found yourself surfing the web, but before you can access a site,

you're asked to decipher distorted letters and type them into a text box below? Those are called captTCHAs. CAPTCHAs were introduced to the web in the early 2000s as a way of ensuring people entering certain sites were, in fact, people and not spam-laden robots. Typically, CAPTCHAs take the form of distorted letters. Other times, they involve scanning images for patterns.

But companies like CAPTCHA.me and Solve Media realized captchas were ripe for disruption and could even be useful to brands. Through these companies, brands can pay to substitute the distorted letters for, say, an image of the Volkswagen logo, asking users to type the slogan DOS Auto into the text box. Unlike banner ads on sites, CAPTCHA advertising would force users to engage with the brand. A huge win for advertisers. But some users have reservations about being required to type in a brand slogan they may not support. So, Solve Media came up with a solution.

If the captcha displays an image of the McDonald's logo, for example, users can type in their opinions of the brand in the text box rather than a slogan. So they could type in delicious or not loving it. And the data from these captchas then go straight to the brands for analytics. It's a captivating idea. The human body is fast becoming a mobile advertising medium. In New Zealand, a fashion chain called Suprette found a way to advertise on thighs.

The store was having a sale on shorts, so they placed indented plates on bus stop benches, park benches, and mall seats. These plates contained the words, short shorts, Suprette. So when people sat on the benches while wearing shorts or skirts, the words were pressed into the skin on the back of their thighs. Kind of like getting a sleep crease from a pillow.

And when they walked away, soupret had a walking billboard for their short sale that lasted at least the next half hour until the imprint faded. It's a bold and somewhat questionable concept, considering the people with imprinted thighs may not even know they are walking billboards, which gives new meaning to the phrase body language. Some fearless people have even auctioned off advertising space on themselves. It's called skinvertising. Two British university grads together had amassed over $80,000 in student debt. To pay it off, they started an unusual website

called buymyface.com. They drew ads onto their faces using face paint. Then, advertisers like Ernst & Young and the Salvation Army paid them to perform stunts like skydiving and submerging into icy waters

while wearing the ads. Within a single year, the boys were entirely debt-free. Gambling site GoldenPalace.com even paid one Utah woman $15,000 to have their URL permanently tattooed across her forehead. The tattoo parlor that did the deed apparently spent seven hours trying to talk her out of it, to no avail. But there is one type of skinvertising that I'm kind of partial to. In the mid-2000s, Brandon Chukotsky was a student at the University of Texas. He was young, eager, and had a head full of hair. Aside from

his studies, he managed a campaign office for future President Barack Obama, along with advocating for policy change within the U.S. Congress. But by the time he received his master's degree, he found himself entirely bald.

As Chukotsky says, he put his blood, sweat, and hair into his work. I hear you, brother. Over time, he noticed that his hair, or lack thereof, had become somewhat of a conversation piece among friends and colleagues, and it gave him a marketing idea. He called it Bald Logo.

Here's how it works. Brands send an image of their logo or slogan to Bald Logo, who then prints it off as a waterproof temporary tattoo. The tattoos are applied to the desired number of you know, follically challenged heads

and worn to events or locations of the brand's choosing. Bald logo staff then document the logo's impact with photos and videos of people's reactions and interactions with the baldies. All for about 400 Canadian dollars a day. And they donate almost half of their proceeds to a foundation looking for a cure for baldness.

God bless these people. Another wacky ad placement resides about 8 inches south of there. Enter beardvertising. Kentucky ad agency Cornette first coined the term beardvertising in 2013. As 55% of men have facial hair, Cornette saw an opportunity. They created beard boards, tiny business card-sized ads that clip straight onto your beard. Willing gentlemen are paid $5 a day to sport the tiny billboards for brands like A&W and Dollar Shave Club. Business Insider called it half joke, half genius.

Either way, it's a fascinating new strand of marketing. If you're looking for flexible workouts, Peloton's got you covered. Summer runs or playoff season meditations, whatever your vibe, Peloton has thousands of classes built to push you. We know how life goes. New father, new routines, new locations. What matters is that you have something there to adapt with you, whether you need a challenge or rest. And Peloton has everything

you need, whenever you need it. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. and the Japanese subway hired white-gloved, uniformed staff to literally push people into the crowded subway cars so the doors could close and the subway could run on time. Born of that crowded subway environment comes a new, wacky ad idea. A Japanese firm has recently begun selling advertising space on commuters' armpits. Yes, you heard right in the warm months thousands of commuters have to hold on to the overhead straps in the subway cars exposing their underarms and a firm called the wacky no ad company named after the word wacky the Japanese term for armpit, saw an opportunity.

It created rectangular, full-color ads measuring 2 inches by 4 inches that stick snugly to armpits. The cost to advertise on an armpit is roughly about $100 per hour. The first company to take advantage of this wacky new ad space was the Seishin Bioclinic that specializes in a painless underarm hair removal procedure. Makes sense to me. The Wakino ad company looks to hire attractive armpit models, both male and female. As a matter of fact, when Wakino first advertised for armpit models, 1,300 people applied. It plans to stage a beauty contest

to find the most attractive armpits in Japan. Hands up if you're interested. Ambient advertising is a double-edged sword. In this crazy cluttered world, where the average person is exposed to over 3,500 messages a day, the data smog is thick, so advertisers have to be resourceful. The element of surprise is a powerful weapon in marketing, because surprise attracts attention, and that attention creates impact.

Audi's sponsorship of the auto show Wi-Fi was a very smart and surprising way of reaching the one million visitors at the event. Maybe lasered food logos will cut down on unnecessary packaging. And the fetish ads on the bottom of ketchup bottles just made me laugh. The other edge of that sword is the ever-marching infantry of ads in the world. The digital era has created more advertising clutter than traditional media ever has. One of the main reasons so many websites load so slowly is because of the number of embedded ads they contain so when that clutter pushes advertisers to look for new unexpected places to put their messages ambient marketing can

start to expropriate every square inch of our lives how welcome that practice is depends to some degree on how clever the placement is. Maybe the real question is not why there is so much advertising in the world, but rather, why is there so much bad advertising in the world when you're under the influence? I'm Terry O'Reilly. This episode was recorded in the Terrestrial. Producer, Debbie O'Reilly. Sound engineer, Keith Ullman.

Theme music by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre. Co-writer, Sydney O'Reilly. Follow me on Twitter at Terry O. Influence for show updates and bonus material. See you next week. Under the Influence t-shirt. Or maybe I was dreaming that. But anyway, we have them for sale on our shop page. And if you listen to the show while sipping a tea or a coffee, have we got the mug for you. Go to terryoreilly.ca slash shop.