Sometimes I don’t know how I feel about advertising… I work for an online marketing company and I certainly know that a business can hardly succeed these days without some pretty aggressive advertising strategies. But what I don’t get - what sometimes bugs me to the point screaming - is the way that commercialization seems to be infiltrating every aspect of our lives.

Whatever happened to ballparks like Tiger Stadium and Comisky Park? They’ve given way to Minute Maid Park and Citizens Bank Field. College Gameday is “built by The Home Depot”, and TV shows and movies are chock full of product placement. Growing up, I would watch the Fiesta Bowl. Now, I watch the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. I once heard a BYU Football game broadcast in which they scored a touchdown in the “Zion’s Bank end zone” and then kicked a “Sierra West extra point”… It’s True! We are getting a little carried away folks.

As any of my friends would tell you; I’ve said for years that, if we have empty space, we’ll find a way to fill it with Ads. For the most part, I’m ok with this. If the space is empty, and you’re clever enough to discover a way to use it, more power to you (one exception to this is sports team uniforms – let’s leave those be, please). I saw an example of this clever use of space a few days ago that really had me thinking.

I pulled into a parking lot in Salt Lake City and, as I stepped out, I noticed that the white paint that typically outlines the parking spaces was being used as an advertising medium for Nationwide Auto Insurance. The Nationwide Logo, along with the “Life Comes at You Fast” slogan was printed on either side of the stall, and on every stall in the parking lot. I have never seen anything like this before.

As I started to think about it, I realized how clever it really was. Its visible, ubiquitous advertising, and its far more targeted than most other advertising methods. Think about it: 100% of the cars that park in that parking lot have a driver, and all drivers need auto insurance, so the audience is pre-qualified and has been brought right to the advertisement. Amazing.

So, as carried away as I think we are as a marketing society, there are still some pretty cool, unobtrusive advertising techniques out there. Maybe I’ll be clever enough to think up one someday.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 25th, 2007 at 8:37 am and is filed under Yada Yada. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.