5 Better Mousetraps!

We humans are an amazing species and Western civilization in particular, having embraced capitalism, spends every waking hour in the pursuit of achievement. We are always trying to improve our lot in life and to accomplish this goal, we rely on advertising.

We are all familiar with traditional forms of advertising such as newspaper, magazines, radio, TV, adwords, email and direct mail. What intrigued me this week, was more unconventional forms. The "what will they think of next" form of promotion. I've heard critics say that ads are appearing in way to many locations and there is a need to limit their exposure. Personally I don't have a problem with advertising, it's what makes our culture click and for me anyway, it is another art form. It speaks to who we are as a society.

Here are 5 new forms of advertising that are unique. I hope you enjoy the creativity behind them.

• First up is Bumvertising™ - a name coined by the author of this site. Essentially it is adding an advertising message to a homeless person's home-made sign so that passing citizen's take note of the ad. Many consider the concept degrading. The homeless appear to consider it an opportunity. You be the judge.

• Next comes leasing out a part of your body to advertising tattoos. This is your opportunity to make up to $5,000. to put a logo and or message front and center on your forehead. If you are an extrovert and your employer has no issues with it (other than the competition's logo), I suppose it's a great way to earn a few buck and get a bit of notoriety.

• Third comes Target and their brilliant concept of putting their logo large on their store rooftops so that viewers of Google Earth will spot them when they zoom in on an earthly location. This is just way-clever!

• Fourth puts marketing where marketing has not gone before- outer space. Students from MIT and Georgia Tech, are launching a spacecraft into earth orbit in 2010 and they are renting out a spot on the sides of their spacecraft to visionary sponsors. This will be a great media opportunity.

• And finally Five: graphical waterfalls. This form of marketing is mezmerizing. I saw one for Jeep at the Detroit's international auto show and you simply can't stop looking at it. The video in the link shows this example as well as many others. It is not light projected on water but little droplets dropping in sequence to forms shapes and words. Big WOW factor!

Do you have other forms of advertising that are high in creativity? These examples caught my eye. My favorite of the five is graphical waterfalls.