Students sell ‘valuable skin space’ to KMPG and McDonalds for promotional tattoos
After running out of viable inorganic surfaces, city firms are having to get creative. Enter ‘brand-a-brand’.
For most people, reaching the eyes, and oft-vacant minds of Warwick students isn’t a top priority. Yet, to scoop up the UK’s freshest cohort of ambitious second-tier students, city behemoths are moving away from pens, posters, bicycles, billboards, books, brand ambassadors, charities, lecture courses, societies and events — and advancing to the next frontier: the students themselves.
The new project, brand-a-brand, pays students £100 per square inch per year in return for tattooing the logo of PWC, Deloitte, EY, or KPMG across visible body areas. Priority is to be given to foreheads, cheeks and women’s thighs.
“This marketing drive will help students considerably,” announced Noah Lebrahl, junior-sub-vice press secretary of Free-Marketing, the ad agency behind the program, “ignoring the accumulation of above-market interest, a student who applies a modest ten facial logos can pay off their student debt by the age of 60, giving them an ample 25 years to save for their retirement”.
Why’s the campaign needed? “We found that too many bright young minds were venturing into productive careers in science, the arts, and medicine,” said Noah, “we really need to make sure we secure the crème-de-la-déchets when it comes to students, as such, we need to render all other options invisible”.
A quick straw-poll of students found the prevailing attitudes to student-branding range from “couldn’t hurt my spring week application” on one extreme, and “do you need references? I have references? Where do I apply? My aunt works for you, can I get a fast-track? I’ll literally kill my nan for PWC” on the other.
Whilst we can expect to see ‘big four’ logos cropping up on students’ faces over the coming weeks, there is apparently a “whole host of exciting campaigns” on the way.
One such is a KPMG-sponsored occupation of the philosophy department. Another is JP Morgan’s highly secretive project to re-code the human genome so as to eliminate ‘wasteful’ evolutionary by-products, such as empathy, creativity, and the need for sleep.