Sheep Advertising

[size=18:8d4a161723]Bleats, Blankets Boost Business[/size:8d4a161723]

By DOREEN CARVAJAL The New York Times

Published: Apr 24, 2006

The latest low-technology billboards along highways in the Netherlands are startling enough to prompt motorists to indulge in U-turns.

Make that ewe-turns. These ads are walking, woolly flocks of bleating sheep. Early this month, Hotels.nl, a Dutch online reservations company, began displaying its corporate logo on royal blue waterproof blankets worn by sheep.

The company spends 1 euro, or about $1.23 a day, per sheep and sponsors about 144 sheep in flocks throughout the Netherlands. But commercially branded sheep roaming the meadows of the northern Netherlands have prompted a reaction.

On Saturday, the town of Skarsterlan began fining Hotels.nl 1,000 euros a day for putting branded blankets on sheep. Advertising on livestock violates the town's ban on advertising along the highways. "My first reaction was a smile; it is very creative," said Bert Kuiper, the town's mayor. "My second reaction is that we have to stop this. If we start with sheep, then next it's the cows and horses."

Hotels.nl said it would pay the fines, but it planned to fight the ban in court. Since the advertising strategy started, sales by Hotels.nl have been up 15 percent, and so were visits to the company's Web site, said Miechel Nagel, chief executive of Hotels.nl, a four-year-old company based in Groningen. He plans to increase the number of sheep sporting the company's logo and is searching for locations where there are frequent traffic jams.

"As a company in modern times, you have to take some risks," Nagel said. "You cannot be everybody's friend. Let's say 25 percent are against this. But we can't have all the Dutch people as customers."

Hotels.nl did not originate the idea of sheep as billboards, but it was the first company here to use the technique. A Dutch horse breeder, Andre Groen, dreamed up the concept, and Easy Green Promotions, based in Leiden, created what it called "Lease a Sheep Shirt-Sponsoring."

Easy Green designed and owns the blankets, which include a layer of insulation washed in citronella to repel insects.

http://cellar.org/2006/sheepadvertising.jpg
-Sorry, I didn't know how to post the image.

:icon_lol:

Darn ... haven't got any sheep. I wonder if someone would pay me for advertising their product on my kids.

:icon_lol:

They could have advertised on MoveToNZ and paid us for it! :icon_wink:

Al Sheepa supports this campaign. It's not animal cruelty. It is mutually beneficial for all species involved.

Good on ya Dutchies!!

[quote:ce2210537d="Glenda"]:icon_lol:

Darn ... haven't got any sheep. I wonder if someone would pay me for advertising their product on my kids.

:icon_lol:[/quote:ce2210537d]

Surely your kids, like everybody elses, advertise products for all the nasty, money grabbing clothes companies free of charge already, there's no getting away from it nowadays!

Refuse to allow mine to display FCUK or Playboy logo across their chests, or their behinds or anywhere else. Tut, tut, tut, no, no, no [-X