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A few years ago, bus tickets and taxi receipts were simple proof that you had paid for a journey. Now they’re another place for an advertising or marketing message.

Create an ambience

Advertising in unexpected places, where traditional ad spaces are sidestepped, often comes under the banner of ambient marketing. Although it’s been around for a while, companies are coming up with ever more ingenious ideas to get their message across.

Currently big in Japan are Brajackets (Source: Trends in Japan). Here, stylishly-designed, durable branded bookcovers are given out for free in bookstores. People who read in public are then providing free advertising space targeting other commuters, café-goers and shoppers.

If you who regularly pretend to read War and Peace in public to look intellectual, use a Brajacket and you could read a trashy paperback instead. Nobody will ever twig you’re reading anything other than a literary masterpiece.

Your space, their brand

According to Springwise.com, other companies have chosen to develop ‘brand spaces’, such as a Turkish nappy manufacturer building cosy baby changing rooms at shopping malls. This both promotes their message to consumers and gets consumers to actually try their product.

In another method that’s heavily targeted and highly effective, an ad agency in Australia uses nightclub pass handstamps to imprint an advert directly onto clubbers’ skin.

How can you get in on the ambient act?

In addition to sending a marketing message, ambient promotions also make for great PR. You could publicise your ambient idea as a news story in the local and national press, on the web and in your email marketing campaigns.

For example, you could be an online travel company and brand deckchairs-for-hire at the local beach or park with your url. Or, you might be a garden tool manufacturer and create public flowerbeds where flowers grow in the shape of your logo.

So come on, get creative and come up with a great ambient idea.