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#1 – April 2010 A magazine about real life transactions |
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Human Billboards – Introduction Jacco Kranenburg Ebay is known as the world’s leading auction site, but left in the margin the eBay marketplace also proves to be a platform for fortune seekers, freaks and exhibitionists. In addition to regular product offerings, a new type of auction has come into existence, peppered with personal anecdotes. Nurtured by the media and American talk show host Jay Leno this has resulted in a series of legendary auctions. One of the major eBay hypes took place in November 2004 featuring a grilled cheese sandwich holding a presumed image of the Virgin Mary. The winning bidder was online casino Golden Palace, who was willing to pay out $28.000 for it. Following the many success stories, a continuous stream of auctions has blossomed, through which exceptional goods and services are offered for sale. Motives for advertising vary from “just for fun”, boredom, financial trouble to plain exhibitionism. As a result of the large number of odd auctions, eBay was prompted to introduce a special category called “weird stuff”, which was further subdivided into “slightly unusual”, “really weird”, and “totally bizarre”. A much talked about auction, which would lead to many imitations, featured a mother offering her forehead as advertising space to help funding her children’s college education. Once again it was Golden Palace who won the auction and paid out $10.000 in order to be entitled to place a permanent tattoo. This type of auction has become a unique category and its providers are known as “human billboards”. In auction, people offer themselves to walk around with a particular ad for a certain period of time, and sometimes even permit to be provided with a permanent tattoo. This form of advertising already exists for over a century, but thanks to eBay demand and supply have become fully transparent. Anyone who considers himself to be suitable for the job can offer himself as a human billboard. Out of sheer curiosity, I started to bid personally on several human billboard auctions. One thing that struck me was the utter confidence with which the different providers presented themselves. Without an exception, they were all convinced that they could provide unique and valuable advertising opportunities. For over two years I purchased as many of these human billboards as possible, advertising my design studio and web address. Instead of actual effective advertising, it did provide me with some delightful views into personal lives. Some of these most fascinating transactions are presented in this magazine. |
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