urban spam

This is an example of what I mean by Urban Spam (not the fact that this coffee cup is on some street furniture, I just put it there to shoot it).

We got given this cup and 'to-go sleeve' at Coffee Republic. It's got a rubbish Motorola ad on it. Motorola have spammed me, with Coffee Republic's complicity. By buying the coffee you willingly and happily get into a relationship with Coffee Republic. You don't sign up to receieve ads. I didn't get a discount from Coffee Republic for consuming this ad, though they presumably got some money from Motorola.

It's not a big deal, I'm not hugely bothered, but it's all part of the last desperate interruptive marketing arms race, which is just going to annoy every consumer on earth before the industry learns that attention needs to earned not bought.

We should all stop before someone invents a Dr Strangelovey interruptive marketing doomsday machine that we can't turn off.

Comments

[anthony]

Wow that is harsh - the only thing that would irritate me is that fact that the ad is so pointlessly + needlessly atrocious.

[russell]

But I think that's part of the equation. If the thing was in some way entertaining or useful, or even tried to be, maybe it would irritate me less. But it's just acting like it's got a divine right to be in my attentionspace.

[anthony]

I hear you man. The bad thing is as we get ads in more and more new media spaces, they will (for the most part) be utter rubbish, as I think creativity only generally develops once spaces get saturated with bad ideas.

E.g. mobile phone campaigns - medium offers fantastic possiblities, but the reality is 99% of the campaigns are offensive TXT2WINs, irrelevant vouchers, etc. Because the responses are either OK/unmonitored/un-brandtracked, people see the need to be creative in these spaces.

[margaret]

But that cup of coffee would actually wind up costing you more money - they are saving you in the end, because the advertiser is providing the sleeves to the retail location (the coffee chain receives no money, they receive free supplies) - and what could be better than literally getting your message right in the hands of a consumer? Granted - creative is key in these types of tactics...

[Richard]

Urban Spam brilliant repositioning of ambient or guerilla marketing because that is exactly what it is. At least Telly ads pay for the telly.

[randon.thoughts]

The use of advertising on coffee cups is one more sign of Corporate Intrusion similar to adverts on the back of train tickets and posters above urinals for personalised number plates(not sure if these are present in laydees loos?!). When will it stop? It can only be a matter of time before Tarbucks (sic) begin to place ads on their brown cup holders. Incidentally the Starbucks at Cannon Street Stn always has huge queues but just opposite, the "independent" deli serves a far superior capp, there's never a queue and NO SPAM!