Advertising is everywhere – but that’s nothing new

If you were one of the approximately one gazillion Australians who ordered food from Uber Eats this past week, you may have noticed the company is now serving up video commercials on its post-checkout page, the screen where you monitor the status of your order. 

Now, instead of furiously tracking some guy on a bike as he weaves his way through a virtual map of your surrounding streets – furrowing your brow as the little bike icon pauses too long at some corner, secretly thinking, “I bet he’s eating some of my chips” – you can instead watch a trailer for a new Stan series, or learn the answer to the eternal question: What’s in the box with the dots?

It’s a smart idea, and an inevitable one. After all, there is nowhere left that is safe from advertising. There’s certainly no corner of the internet that is free from banner ads or sponsored links, no app that isn’t teeming with promotional opportunities, no street  — real or in Fortnite — that we can safely walk down without being prompted to just do it. Mick Jagger saw a red door and wanted to paint it black. Advertisers see a red door, and think of integration opportunities with Red Door Perfume. 

Don’t worry, this isn’t an anti-advertising screed – for a trade publication about the media and marketing industry to publish such a rant would be as self-defeating as – oh, I dunno, attacking the names of various agencies…

This is, in fact, an ode to the creative advertising opportunities that have been seized upon by the types of entrepreneurs that look up at the Australian flag, salute it stoically, then notice all that free, logo-less space in the bottom right-hand corner.

This is a celebration of the type of nous that, for example, resulted in American broadcasting giant CBS printing advertising slogans for its shows onto 35 million eggs back in 2006 – correctly reckoning they could use the same technology developed to print expiry dates on the shells of eggs to instead shell out crackers like “CBS Mondays: Leave the Yolks to us” and “CSI: Crack the case with CBS”.

“CBS copywriters are referring to the medium as ‘egg-vertising’”, the New York Times reported at the time, while astutely asking, “will the novelty expire after a few dozen bad puns?”

Of course, egg-vertising did expire, and well before the pun total reached a few dozen. Turns out, people didn’t like being advertised to on their food. There was an immediate backlash about such intrusive advertising. Not in my fridge, the public roared. Of course, this was back in those days before Australia Post would routinely send text messages asking you to rate your emotional response to timely parcel delivery.

That same year that egg-vertising debuted, Saatchi & Saatchi rolled out a genius guerilla advertising campaign for Folgers coffee, in which they stuck a vinyl sticker over the manhole covers in New York City, with two precisely placed holes to allow the subway steam to rise as if from a steaming hot cup of Folgers.

You may recall this type of real-world advertising was done to spectacular effect this year by the numerous brands and agencies linked with the Barbie movie.

Suddenly burgers, donuts, and anything edible was cast in Barbie Pink. Your burger wasn’t just a burger anymore, it was an advertisement. An advertisement for a movie that was an advertisement for a doll. 

Real-world novelty advertising isn’t always so brilliant. In the pre-social media days, online casino Golden Palace paid a number of boxers to wear GoldenPalace.com temporary tattoos, then upped this stunt further when it paid serial streaker Mark Roberts to don one of the GoldenPalace.com tats while doing a nudie run at a UEFA Cup final, then again at a Super Bowl.

It caused the company a lot of controversy – which is to say it generated Golden Palace a lot of free publicity. Taking a further gamble, GoldenPalace.com took this stunt to its logical conclusion and paid a woman US$15,000 to get the website address permanently tattooed on her body. In real, permanent ink.

Worst still, the tattoo was applied to a rather sensitive part of the body, known in medical parlance as “the face”.

This is not a successful advertising strategy. Then again, I’m writing about it, close to two decades later. 

In a world where advertising is targeted at you through thousands of data points, by mining your online shopping history, tracking your physical location, and using your body’s actual physiology via your Apple Watch, such gimmicky stunts such as the manhole covers and the egg-cruciating puns seem quant (I’ll admit the face tattoo hasn’t aged well).

There are now companies that will fly your advertisement into space, use a satellite to get imagery of it, then send it back to you so you can share rubbish space puns like the one below.

Even space billboards are fast becoming old hat, though.

Last month, Elon Musk’s Neuralink venture announced it had started taking recruits for a brain implant trial. How many nano-seconds after this technology is successfully implemented will we start seeing advertising delivered directly to the human mind?

We are filling up every single space, virtual and physical, with advertising. It’s natural to feel crowded out by advertising, to feel that it is following us around, invading our space, tapping into our brains. But this is nothing new. 

We have been advertising since at least the first century AD; the earliest example of a commercial advertisement was discovered in the ruins of the once-great Pompeii. 

There it is! Gaze upon its brilliance. Marvel at its majesty. Experience time collapse and fold in on itself, as you realise the advertising industry is as old as human endeavor itself.

What exactly is it, you ask?

Why, it’s a penis, carved into a stone wall, in order to helpfully point citizens to the local brothel.

Enjoy your day!