The BMW project is just the tip of the iceberg. Everywhere you look advertisers are finding ingenious new ways to get in your face. There are ads on bananas, stamped in sand at the beach. Bank machines exploit the 10-second window while you wait for cash, flogging gum, cars and dreamy vacations. Virtual advertising on television, especially pervasive in sports, can create a bridge, blanketed with cigarette ads, in coverage of the Molson Indy car race.
Virtual ads are common in end zones, outfield fences, fictitious blimps.
The CBS breakfast program caused a ruckus last year when it slapped the logo for its The Early Show on skyscrapers and horse-drawn carriages in New York's Central Park. The site sold thousands of T-shirts. Meanwhile, a Mississauga, Ont.-based company, called Filmfly Entertainment, has set up TouchPoint computerized kiosks in the lobby of Famous Players's Paramount theatre in Toronto's downtown. As far as David Newton, president of product-placement house Premier Entertainment, is concerned, the sky's the limit as far as advertising goes these days. The taboos are gone, and the lines are blurring between art, entertainment and advertising.