Flutterby™! : You Too Can be A Billboard 2006-09-21 14:20:19.915406+00

You Too Can be A Billboard

2006-09-21 14:20:19.915406+00 by petronius 9 comments

Every year I go to a trade show in Chicago that includes marketing and motivation tools, stuff like pencils with "your name here", advertising coffee mugs and beach towles, and even sales incentive plans where the first prize is a new shotgun. Every show also includes a lot of slightly ridiculous ideas. One year a guy was selling day-glo colored cards with Your Name on one side and the word TAXI on the other; you were supposed to wave this at the street when you wanted a cab. Too late, he discovered that anybody with a printer could duplicate the product. However, I just got an e-mail for the 2006 Stupid Marketing Idea of the Year: Laptop Billboards. I expect to see this at Starbucks in the coming months.

It's why my klunker Linux laptop has GeekLabs and a hand drawn Penguin on it. It gets me some very interesting, and sometimes lucrative coffee-shop conversations. The trend I see a lot of is interesting bumper stickers and band stickers on Laptops in coffee shops, schools, etc..

While that is the "Stupid Marketing Idea of the Year". Like you, I expect to see it on Realtors and similiar sales-droids laptops in the very near future.

I'll be in Chicago 9/27 for Wicked and to eat at SushiSamba and hang out doing artsy stuff on a quick, playful trip.

My companion wants the "feel" of Chicago, but I can't see her eatin' a dog like y'all do 'em up there, so I'm leaning toward heading into Greektown, but hometown suggestions for fun, funky, not to far from the Loop lunch venue options would be highly appreciated.

Ghastly Flash

interface, but... the ability to rework my laptop's branding depending on the client seems like it might be a good thing. That way I can slap in the package with the Good Vibrations bumpersticker and the original (back when they were "Pyra") Blogger sticker for those South of Market gatherings, the HP logo for when I want laughs in a group full of journalists, and the shrunk Despair posters for those meetings in the South Bay.

But kinda seems like you could do the same thing with a piece of double-sticky tape and a sheet of acrylic, and it'd have a better form factor and be cheaper.

I wouldn't call it the "Stupid Marketing Idea of the Year". It's actually not a bad idea. If you go to alot of conferences and workshops where the presenter's laptop is pointing toward you the entire talk, it makes alot of sense. And I'm sure it could be done cheaper, but for $25, who cares? Besides, they probably executed it better that you could with just acrylic.

As far as the coffee shops go, it's only a matter of time before everyone has one and they become pasee'. I wonder if any graphic artists have considered custom-painting laptops... That would be cool!

And for getting the real "feel" for Chicago - you should go a little later in the seasonso you are guaranteed to get that arctic chill blowing in from the lake! And be sure to hit Second City!

#Comment Re: [Entry #9299] Re: made: 2006-09-21 19:01:02.613448+00 by: Unknown, from NNTP

<http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/12/how_its_made_laser_etching_pow.html>

Hmmmm... Ya know, my neighbor has a laser cutter that can be turned down to just do etching...

Figuring out what I'd want to put on a laptop that'd be really cool is a different problem.

Heh. What with the new dual-core notebook processors, and the decreasing prices on LCD screens, why not make a laptop with LCD panels on both sides of the top cover? Project an animated advertisement on the back while working on the front side. (You could use a lower-resolution display for the ad; or mount the screen on a swivel so you'd have a redundant display.) Disable it for battery-powered operation, or flash it on 5 seconds out of every minute.