Inside The Mind Of An Automotive Geek

What does Angelina Jolie have in common with Eminem and Joseph Stalin as well as 2 out of every 5 Americans between the ages of 26 and 40?

They all have tattoos.

Once used a weapon of rebellion, tattoos have eventually achieved a mainstream status. Matter of fact, tattoos is now used in ad campaigns of both auto and tire manufacturers. But as I see it, the phenomenon carries a noteworthy disadvantage. The more they become accepted in ad campaigns, the more they lose their edginess as an advertising lure.

"There is always an element of rebellion or rite of passage with these things," said David Crockett, assistant professor of marketing at the University of South Carolina. "What makes them interesting is how the marketplace appropriates that rebelliousness and serves that back to you in the form of an energy drink."

As the attention of young consumers gets spread between TV, blogs, online video and other distractions, marketers have resorted to alternative methods to get their interest, said The Canadian Press.

A recent study from the Pew Research Center reflects that 36% of 18-to 25-year-olds have at least one tattoo, while an even higher 40 per cent of 26-to 40-year-olds have at least one.

Marketers use tattoos both as a cultural icon and as the method to deliver the message, said Kevin Lane Keller, a marketing professor at the Tuck business school at Dartmouth College. "It's an attempt to do something different in a fresh way," he said.

Companies such as Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. to Volvo Cars are using tattoos in advertising and promotion. This is to captivate the choice of the young.

For 3 years, Goodyear's Dunlop tire unit has offered a set of free tires to anyone who will get the company's flying-D logo tattooed somewhere on their body, and 98 people have taken up the offer, said the report. Some of them are brand loyalists who already own Dunlop tires, while others were tattoo fans who wanted to add to their body art, Dunlop brand marketing manager Janice Consolacion said. One returned for his third Dunlop tattoo this year.

Volvo, a Swedish automaker, recently utilized tattoos in another way. The automaker created a fictional character whose tattoos spelled out the co-ordinates of an undersea location of $50,000 in gold coins and the keys to a new car. Linda Gangeri, national advertising manager of Volvo Cars of North America, said the tattoo man was a way to get people to think differently about the Volvo brand.

Tattoos are becoming so persistent. Some watchers see this as a downside. They said tattoos are less effective in marketing to trendsetters.

Nathan Lin, a tattoo artist and organizer of the annual Boston Tattoo Convention, said the event's sponsors reflect the shifting demographics of tattoo culture in the U.S. This year, it was Toyota Motor Corp.'s Scion brand and Anheuser Busch Cos.' Budweiser. Next year's convention has received sponsorship interest from Internet service provider NetZero among other corporate names, he added.

Once corporations use tattoos, it's clear they have lost some of their edginess, Crockett said. "You've got this constant game of cat and mouse, of youth culture and these companies. That lifecycle just gets shorter and shorter and shorter," he said.

"I would certainly say it has lost most of its social stigma," noted Vince Hemingson, a writer and documentary filmmaker who runs the Vanishing Tattoo website.