What do foreheads and cars have in common?

I have always been fascinated by advertisements. I remember watching TV once with a friend, and I found myself yelling at the commercials for being stupid and pointless. My friend turned to me and said; "If you're going to get frustrated at every ad you see, you'll be in big trouble."

This morning's NYT proved his point. There was an article in the Media & Advertising section called "Your Ad Here, on MY S.U.V.? And You'll Pay?" It was about how businesses are beginning to pay ordinary people to drive around with ads on their cars. It reminded me of the person who auctioned off his forehead for tattoo-ad space.

Apparently, these forehead-billboards are not uncommon (type in "ad tattoos" to Google, and you'll see what I mean.) And, apparently, these car-billboards are not uncommon either. The article reports ten of thousands of people have participated in this form of advertisement, called "car wrapping". Companies offer an $800 stipend for this service, so getting a new paint job in the name of marketing is hard to refuse.

I can understand why a company would place their ad on an everyday car, the NYT reports that a single "car wrap" will be seen 70,000 times a day. And I know companies are looking for unique advertising space, especially since the invention of Tivo and satellite radio.

But I am reminded of the concluding comments of Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point. He talked of "ad saturation", the concept that at some point, people can become saturated with ads and begin to ignore them completely. He argues that this "tipping point" for advertisements has already occur, and creating more ads, for any product, will only decrease the incentive to buy.

Obviously, the people paying to wrap a car with their product's message do not think this is the case. Back before the average American saw more than 600 ads in a day, more advertisements meant more exposure. If someone saw a Coke commercial on the six o'clock news in the Sixties, that might influence their next decision to buy a beverage. Now, seeing a Coke ad is a part of everyday life. It doesn't sway my decision one way or the other, and I would doubt if it did for anyone else.

When learning about classical conditioning in Intro to Psych, our professor explained that most marketers do not take into account human psychology when designing ads. As I begin to see more and more ads every day, and get more and more frustrated, I have to believe he is right.