Human billboard

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Human billboard on a street corner

A human billboard is someone who applies an advertisement on his or her person. Most commonly, this means holding or wearing a sign of some sort, but also may include wearing advertising as clothing or in extreme cases, having advertising tattooed on the body. Sign-holders are known as human directionals in the advertising industry, or colloquially as sign walkers or sign twirlers. Frequently, they will spin or dance with the promotional sign in order to attract attention.

1 History
2 Modern times
3 Clothing
4 Tattoos
5 Other
6 References
7 External links

[edit] History

An artistic depiction of human billboards in 19th century London, by George Scharf.

Human billboards have been used for centuries. In 19th century London, the practice began when advertising posters became subject to a tax and competition for wall space became fierce. Prince Pückler-Muskau described the activity in 1820s London as such:

“

Formerly people were content to paste [advertisements] up; now they are ambulant. One man had a pasteboard hat, three times as high as other hats, on which is written in great letters, 'Boots at twelve shillings a pair - warranted'.^[1]

”

The banning of posters from private property in London in 1839 greatly increased the use of human billboards.^[2] Besides holding signs, some human billboards would wear sandwich boards, thus giving rise to the name "sandwich men".^[1] As the novelty of seeing humans carrying placards wore off, advertisers would come up with variations on the theme in order to catch the eye, such as having a "parade" of identical human billboards, or having the human billboards wear outrageous costumes.

[edit] Modern times

Modern human directional

Human directionals are still widely used, especially in areas that have a lot of pedestrian traffic, but even in places that have a great deal of automobile traffic. For the latter, the signs will frequently be shaped like arrows in order to direct traffic to the location being advertised. Eventz Extraordinaire, a Lake Forest, California company claims to have invented modern sign spinning using arrow-shaped signs.^[3] The modern human directional employs a number of tricks to attract attention, such as spinning the sign on one finger, throwing it up in the air and spinning it, or even riding the sign like a horse. Another California company, Aarrow Advertising, conducts "boot camps" to train its employees and has also filed patent applications for a number of its "signature moves".^[3] However, the use of such attention-grabbing tricks has been criticized by city officials as being distracting to drivers and as a result, a number of cities have banned sign twirling, although not the use of human directionals themselves.^[3]^[4]

Demand for human directionals has significantly increased over the last few years. In temperate and warm locations, sign holders can be employed year-round and their effectiveness has been amply demonstrated. For example, during the month of October 2006, nearly 8 percent of the 3,600 people who visited model homes in a housing development in Moreno Valley, California were directed there by human directionals.^[4] The Entertainment Factory in Florida provides human directionals to several successful businesses in Central Florida. Some use them as their sole form of advertising. Naturally, there are concerns that just as in 19th century London, as human directionals become more and more commonplace, their effectiveness will be diminished. Well known companies include AArrow Advertising and Directional Concepts.

[edit] Clothing

Advertising on clothing has also long been used, with t-shirts being extremely popular. At first, t-shirts were used exclusively as undergarments, but as early as the 1930s, they were already used for advertising, with a 1939 The Wizard of Oz promotional shirt being a prized collector's item today.^[5] The 1948 United States presidential campaign featured a t-shirt with "Dew It for Dewey", referring to candidate Thomas Dewey, which is now housed in the Smithsonian Institution. T-shirts have since been used to advertise all different kinds of products, services, and political messages.

The newest trend is to have moving pictures on clothing. The first instance of this was done at the 2003 Rugby World Cup, where "Telstra girls" wore t-shirts outfitted with a small television screen and a DVD player, called "TelePAKs".^[6] This was duplicated in the United States in 2004 with "Adver-Wear" that made its debut advertising the film I, Robot.^[7]

[edit] Tattoos

In 1999, Vibe magazine predicted that companies in the next millennium would pay people to get tattoos advertising their brands.^[8] In March 2001, American professional basketball player Rasheed Wallace rejected an offer from advertising firm Fifty Rubies Marketing to wear a tattoo advertising a candy company's product.^[9]^[10]^[11]^[12] However, a month later, the cheerleaders for Lincoln Lightning's High Voltage Dance Team wore 2-inch by 4-inch temporary tattoos ("tadoos") that advertised local companies on their bare midriffs.^[13]^[14] In September 2001, online casino GoldenPalace.com paid boxer Bernard Hopkins US$100,000 to wear a temporary tattoo on his back during his championship fight with Félix Trinidad.^[15] Hopkins was the first athlete to wear a tattoo advertisement during a professional sports event.^[16] Six months later, the company did the same to participants in the television show Celebrity Boxing.^[17]

GoldenPalace.com's efforts drew immediate criticism from consumer watchdog groups. Despite this, the move was successful, with GoldenPalace.com's web site traffic increasing 200% after the airing of the show.^[17] The company has since followed up with temporary tattoos on a topless woman at the 2003 U.S. Open and a streaker who ran at the 2003 French Open as well as the 2003 UEFA Cup final.^[15]

The first person to have permanent tattoo for advertising purposes was a 22-year-old named Jim Nelson, who in 2003 sold the space on the back of his head to CI Host, a web hosting service for $7,000.^[18] In the first six months after its application, the tattoo drew in 500 new customers for the company.^[19] In 2005, Andrew Fischer gained worldwide notoriety for auctioning his forehead space on eBay for temporary tattoo advertising, with the final bid coming in at $37,375 for thirty days' worth.^[20]^[21] Fischer oringally planned to use the money to pay for his college tuition, but has since squandered it and currently resides with his parents in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Since then, tattoo advertising has become relatively popular, with a number of companies offering such services, and even large companies like Toyota having used it.^[22]^[23] However, The Globe and Mail reported that there were more people selling parts of their body for advertising than there were buyers.^[24]

[edit] Other

For the launch of its Windows Vista software, Microsoft employed a "human billboard" which was a performance art piece reminiscent of Cirque du Soleil.^[25] In this event, people were suspended along the side of a building and moved banners across a backdrop, creating the Vista logo in the process.