Do you ride the subway or other public transportation? Do you notice the ads in the cars, or do you tune out everyone and everything, particularly the stinky armpits of fellow travelers on crowded trains? Well, in what might possibly be the weirdest place ever for an advertisement, a Japanese company is charging clients roughly $90 per hour to place advertisements on armpits. Yes, you read this correctly – armpit advertising is now a thing.
Wakino Ad Company (“Waki” is the Japanese word for “armpit”) is placing the ads on the underarms of both female and male models for beauty company Liberta, whose product mix includes armpit creams. Wakino is also running a national armpit beauty contest to promote the new areas of advertisements.
While the armpit ads might seem strange, people have long used spaces on their vehicles and bodies to promote products. There have been cases where advertisements have been placed on bald heads, faces, thighs, and other body areas. For armpit ads, the sponsors could be for hair removal, dermatology, lotions, creams, and who know what else.
Go ahead and raise your arm in public – you could get paid.
Group Activities and Discussion Questions:
- Poll students: Who takes public transportation? What ads do they notice?
- Discuss the various promotional tactics that can be used for marketing a product.
- Have students come up with tactics and list all the tactics on the white board (ex: billboards, print, direct mail, etc.).
- Now, introduce the armpit advertisements: https://youtu.be/P54A9L-VyFg
- Divide the students into teams. Have each team list what products could be advertised in armpits?
- What other body locations could host ads? What products or services would they feature?
Source: Ad Week, CNN, other news sources
