MARKETING

Advertisers are a wily lot...they are constantly on the look-out for new ways to ambush us, writes Conor Pope.

IS THERE no length to which advertisers won't go to get our attention? Of course there isn't - and in recent weeks, a slew of companies have started targeting not only our mobile phones but even our hands, with campaigns that seem intent on converting what little personal space we have left into miniature billboards.

The advertising industry's record when it comes to leaving us in peace isn't great. When remote controls became popular decades ago, advertisers forced television networks to synchronise their commercial breaks, so that audiences couldn't escape their ads by channel-hopping.

The same advertisers also cajoled the selfsame, spineless broadcasters into increasing the volume during those breaks so that they could shout louder at us.

In more recent times, pop-ups and animations have taken much of the joy out of surfing the web, while trawling through mountains of e-mail spam - offering the chance to share in the inheritance of the widow of a sub-Saharan dictator - is now an accepted part of most people's working day.

Despite all the new channels that have opened up in the last 10 years, the advertising world is worried. Its audience is growing increasingly savvy and spending more time surfing the web, with ad-blocking software installed, and watching the television through ad-skipping set-top boxes.

At the risk of being accused of product placement - an increasingly malevolent and insidious form of advertising in its own right - the Sky+ set-top box is a wonderful invention which has delivered me from ad evil.

I can record programmes and watch them at my leisure, while gleefully fast forwarding through the commercials at 30 times their intended speeds.

Sky stopped short of introducing the TiVo-style system commonly found in the US, which would have allowed people to skip the ads entirely, as did UPC, which also launched a similar recorder recently.

Since first using the box two years ago, I and millions of others like me, have watched only a handful of television ads. Across the developed world, personal video recorder technology is proving to be the stuff of nightmares for the hidden persuaders whose job it is to sell us stuff we neither want nor need.

It is estimated that nearly 80 per cent of people with such recorders choose to fast forward through the ads (which begs the question: What on earth are the other 20 per cent doing?).

The advertisers are a wily lot, however, and will not take people turning their backs on them lying down. They are constantly on the look-out for new ways to ambush us and they've spotted a chink in our armour. Our mobile phones used to be surprisingly safe havens which couldn't be flooded by the advertising market - save for the occasional illegal SMS ad.

But now, thanks to proximity marketing, which uses Bluetooth, a short-range wireless system for transmitting data to target phones that come within range of small base stations, we are as easily accessible on the hoof as on the couch.

Video clips, web links and promotional codes can be sent across wireless networks to your handset for virtually no cost, making it worryingly effective, from a cold-hearted business perspective.

These Bluetooth ads are also easy to track and, unlike unsolicited email or text messages, aren't in breach of data protection legislation as they are only sent to people who have their Bluetooth enabled - which can be taken as consent - and users have to actively agree to accept the message, albeit unknowingly.

A start-up company called Bluemedia is running a proximity marketing service in a number of Dublin shopping centres and supermarket chains.

They are delivering Bluetooth messages offering news and lifestyle information and in-store promos to enabled handsets.

At least they are offering something. The same can't be said for UPC, which has taken to sending tedious 19-second ads to people's phones from 10 hotspots around the capital, offering nothing but a TV ad replayed on their phones. And last week Honda joined them in this brave new world with the launch of an "interactive poster campaign" on Dublin's Wexford Street.

It will see anyone with a Bluetooth phone who walks within 100m of the site getting a message asking them to send an SMS to a nearby poster. When they do, the car on the poster "starts up" - first the lights flash and then the engine roars and then they get a ringtone of a car engine. Who knew the future would be so tiresomely dull?

It is not only our handsets which are being targeted. Our hands are also vulnerable. IrishHandStamps is a new - if distinctly lo-tech - way of getting an advertiser's message out there.

It swaps the stamps used by bars and nightclubs across Ireland with bespoke stamps that have advertising messages and logos so punters will end up carrying the ads directly on their skins.

"We have exclusive rights to use our hand stamps at a wide ranging number of venues," the press release we received gushed. "This gives us access to hundreds of thousands of men and women across the country every week. What is there not to like about this concept?"

Where do we start?