Tube is the Pits for Advertising

At the risk of giving Right Guard even more publicity but to stop people from emailing me saying "Have you seen this?". Right Guard antiperspirant, clearly on too many drugs from their Lovebox Love Van sponsorship are supposedly trialling armpit advertising or pitvertising. Where else to do this, but on the London Underground?


Ananova broke the "news":

"The innovative new concept uses digital TV screens built into the armpits of shirts. It was developed by deodorant manufacturer Right Guard as the ideal way to market its products.

A hired team of 'Pitvertisers' was sent out into the streets of London to test the new medium.

Passers-by were reportedly amazed by the new marketing tactic - some were clearly impressed; but others thought it the pits".

As soon as I heard about this I thought it was an April Fool. But you're sposed to believe Ananova aren't you? By the time the third person had told me about it and muttered about photoshop, I thought, they don't really need photoshop for this and could easily get a couple of people from the office to stage the shot on the Tube.

But good for them, they've managed to convince a number of other sites that the technology exists including Engadget, WatchingTVOnline, Crunchgear, ubergizmo and gizmodo. I'm sure many others are also reporting that it's a real trial.

Thanks to Jon Justice, Webponce & Wayne Z for being the first three to alert me to this.

If someone from Right Guard would like to invite me to see this "trial" in action and to see the product brief, rationale & business case for it I'd be more than happy to eat my words.

In the meantime you might find the people from ImprovEverywhere or Spacehijackers having a go at convincing people that any ads in people's armpits would be good for the Tube or subway.


We spend enough time looking at people's armpits in the rush hour perhaps the guys from Right Guard aren't so mad after all. Or perhaps they'd be better off sponsoring some of the straphangers (above) which are now part of the London Transport Museum's exhibits.