It all started with Forehead Goldie, a Utah woman named Karolyne Smith who agreed to get GoldenPalace.com permanently tattooed on her forehead for $10,000 so she could send her child to school. Since then, GoldenPalace.com, an online casino and poker room better known for its publicity stunts than its games, has taken advantage of what may be the last frontier in display advertising: the human body.
In their "Human Billboard" campaign, which has been going on for years and is still going on, they have bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of ad space on different parts of people's bodies, usually through an eBay auction posted by the person with the tattoo. Here are some recent examples of this new kind of entrepreneur, whose sanity may or may not be in question:
A 20-year-old man from Evansville, Indiana, got the online casino's logo tattooed on his ankle. This was the first time GoldenPalace's name was mentioned "below the belt." He said he had the idea to pay off some big fines from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles.
GoldenPalace.com was tattooed on the chests of a grandmother and her daughter for 3 months. Another daughter has agreed to have the logo tattooed for 3 months on her pregnant belly. Their total income was $1,000.
Speaking of being pregnant, three sisters from St. Petersburg, Florida, who were all pregnant at the same time, won $5,000 for wearing the same temporary GoldenPalace.com tattoo for three months. They even said they would wear a GoldenPalace.com sweatshirt if they had to go out in cold weather.
GoldenPalace gave professional arm wrestler Brent Norris $1,150.00 in exchange for, among other things, letting him get a temporary tattoo of the GoldenPalace logo on his wrestling arm. This has happened before. The GoldenPalace logo stayed on female World Arm Wrestling champion Dawn Higgin's arm and forehead for a while during a championship match in Tokyo a few years later.
But enough with this short-term nonsense (the ankle is permanent, at least). A woman from Fountain, FL was paid $15,000 by GoldenPalace for a media blitz that included getting a permanent tattoo of the online casino's logo on her chest, spending 3 hours a day for 3 days in a swimsuit in 3 different high-traffic places, and having an advertising banner flown over the beaches of Florida.
Molly Demers, who lives in Reno, sold the back of her head for $18,000. In exchange, she agreed to have her head shaved and the GoldenPalace.com logo tattooed on the bald spot. As an aside, Ms. Demers says she gave the hair she lost to Locks of Love, a charity that gives hairpieces to low-income kids who have been losing their hair for a long time because of a medical condition.
A boxer from Anchorage, Alaska, got $4,450 for giving GoldenPalace the right to put a tattoo on his body anywhere they want. This includes a number of tattoos, as many as GoldenPalace wants, that are "on most of my body," as the seller put it. And on his truck (his or the truck's?) for life.
LeatherFace and The Executioner, two professional stuntmen who became famous on MTV's Viva La Bam, are being paid a total of $13,000 to permanently tattoo GoldenPalace.com on their arms. Both men will give 20% of what they make to The Children's Miracle Network.
And since we're talking about kids, GoldenPalace gave 4-year-old David (his last name was left out on purpose) from Charlotte, North Carolina, $222.50 for a month of free clothes shopping. GoldenPalace only cares about one thing, so David's clothes will probably be simple shirts, shorts, and caps with the GoldenPalace logo on them. Do you think it's strange, though, that a child is advertising a gambling site? Oh, well, what the hell! I like it.
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