Advertising On Money – How To Beat The Deficit
from the all-about-the-eyeballs dept
Javaguy writes in with a link to the story about the latest ad campaign for the miniseries “Traffic” that is to be shown on USA Networks (which is apparently a miniseries based on the movie Traffic – which the article neglects to mention was based on a miniseries itself…). The ad campaign fits with many typical ad campaigns today. The thinking is always: how can we get this in front of the most “eyeballs” – and what attracts eyeballs more than… cash? That’s right, they’re seeding a bunch of bars and clubs with dollar bills that have stickers advertising the miniseries. They claim they’re above the law on this one (you can’t deface money – or copy it) since it’s just a lightly adhesive sticker. Still, they figure that it will get passed around and plenty of people in their target audience (drunks?) will notice it. The CNN article, though, goes on to speculate that this is the beginning of a trend, and maybe the US Treasury can start selling ad space on dollar bills to help make up the deficit. I think they’re only half joking.
Comments on “Advertising On Money – How To Beat The Deficit”
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In San Francisco, you still occasionally find “gay dollars,” a grassroots campaign to show the influence of the homosexuals on the local economy. The campaigners stamped their pocket money with a distinctive but simple mark, then spent that money. I really don’t know if merchants and homophobes were really swayed by the campaign, but it neatly shows the intersection of cash traffic and the impact of subculture.
Oh, and there’s nothing wrong with defacing paper currency, as long as you’re not trying to pass them as a different denomination or blocking the identification of the bill (e.g., changing the serial numbers). You can’t attach stickers to coins as that would be blocking identification, which was raised in Missouri’s “state quarter” design controversy. Think about all those bank-marked bills you see, which are also featured in any bank-heist movie.