Ambient Advertising

Ambient Advertising refers to advertisements that appear in the most unexpected places. For instance, when I am walking in the park, it would be quite unexpected to see an advertisement for a shoe store ingrained into the sidewalk that I am walking in. The point of ambient advertising is that it reaches a great number of people in a cost effective and non-threatening way. This form of advertisement leaves room for creativity and innovation.

Using ambient advertisement for the Otterbein community makes sense because Otterbein students don't generally want to take time out of their day to look at advertisements. Frankly, we are too busy to do that. The best way to get Otterbein students to look at anything beyond the scope of a normal day is by tricking them into looking at it. By having advertisements appear in the most unexpected places, one can easily get a student sidetracked into looking at an advertisement just as easily as one gets sidetracked into facebooking for hours on end.

This ad is one of my persona favorites on account of its ingenious location, the side of a train track. The ad is clearly targeting movie lovers as well as people who frequent train transportation. I automatically chose this ad because it has Jack Black in it, and I practically worship the ground that he walks on (...I love Tenacious D). However, the effectiveness and placement of this advertisement is one of the major reasons that I chose it. Simply put, it appears that Jack Black is being tied down to a railroad track! How clever is that. As a consumer, I am automatically drawn to the advertisement based on the similarity of the locations (aka, we both are on a track track, or at least appear to be). 

This advertisement is extremely clever because it advertises Griffith University all over the world through the suitcases used by foreign exchange students all over the world. The target audience is potentially everybody in the world, especially people who travel a lot. What makes this strategy so effective is the fact that it is essentially free advertisement that potentially travels all over the world. Although we all advertise based off of what we wear, seeing it on a suitcase makes it much more obvious, which is my main reason for choosing this advertisement.