The Living Advertisement - 1181 Words

Greg Dost Professor Price ENGWR 300 2 September, 2014 The Living Advertisement When a man or woman goes to a tattoo parlor, usually they want a tattoo related to what they see as a defining quality about themselves; such as who they love, or what they love doing. However, if they want to trade their pride and a piece of their body for a few thousand bucks, they can get what is known commonly as a skin advertisement. A skin advertisement is a tattoo -usually on an easily visible part of the body such as the forehead- that advertises a business or website. I view this form of advertisement as manipulative and harmful to society, because skin advertisements objectify people and†¦show more content†¦A prime example of a tattoo advertisement can be viewed on the back of a man who has changed his name from Billy Gibby to â€Å"Hostgator Dotcom.† His back is covered with a tattoo reading the name of the site â€Å"Goldenpalace.Com† in large yellow bubble letters. This site is now illegal in the U.S. as a cause of anti-gambling laws. He has not only sold his skin, (with 37 tattoos covering his body) but his name as well, trading his identity to a web hosting company to become an advertisement in name as well as body (Stuef). While Corporations shun this form of advertisement, poorer dot-com businesses would commonly buy tattoo advertisements. They saw the opportunity to advertise cheaply, as well as the advantage of giving their advertisements a human form. Tattoo advertisements are much cheaper than television advertisements in most cases, as the entrepreneurial resource site Gaebler.com proves for us by stating â€Å"The average cost of producing a 30-second national TV commercial is nearly $350,000† (Gaebler). Most tattoo advertisements cost the business less than ten thousand dollars, for a lifetime of advertisement. As well, morphing humans into advertisements for websites gives the appearance of a website almost being human, allowing us to relate to the website and connect the image of the tattoo wearer with the website in our brains. This is what advertisers count on, as associating a â€Å"mascot† with a product forces us to think of the