Just when it seemed almost everything possible had an advertisement slapped on it, Dunkin’ Donuts began taking advantage of all that untapped space between hairlines and eyebrows last week by putting temporary tattoos on students’ foreheads. Although this certainly qualifies as innovative marketing, those who have agreed to fill up that empty space on their faces with a corporate logo might have even more emptiness in their heads than Dunkin’ Donuts realized.
The idea for the new campaign came from a similar one to market the soccer team Manchester United in Britain. However, those crazy European zealots already blanket themselves in football paraphernalia, and many already used their entire bodies to prove their ManU devotion. But using foreheads to promote snack foods and coffee is far more disturbing than even crazed soccer fans’ behavior. Students have long been willing to give out personal info in exchange for any hideous neon yellow T-shirt on Comm. Ave., and the two California students who got their freshman year paid for through corporate sponsorship certainly put their heads to good use.
Dunkin’ Donuts deserves some credit for convincing people to sport their logo without even having to fork over any tasty treats in return. The face tattoos definitely got people talking about the store, and Dunkin’s name certainly came up in many of those conversations. The website part of the campaign (DunkinMania.com) shows pictures of those tattooed and encourages visitors to rate whether each person is ‘Mad Cool’ or a ‘Mad Fool.’ The site actually had so many people eager to see the human billboards that their servers temporarily went down.
However, browsing through the ratings of all the Boston University participants featured shows that the vast majority have been deemed ‘Mad Fools.’ Perhaps the execs behind the campaign should check that out and realize that the new campaign has all the subtlety of having Anna Nicole Smith hawk your product.
Obviously, stupidity reigns free especially in this country and on its campuses yet should never actually be legislated against. Ultimately it is in companies’ own interests to find more intelligent advertising methods. And hopefully plenty of students will use their heads enough to decide to leave them free of ads so this embarrassing new trend does not catch on like the ad execs expect.
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