As the country reels from a strong economic pullback, and we look inward at our budgets, it is easy to forget those in dire need. A few cans of food, some toiletries, or a used doll can go a long way to making a homeless person’s holiday season a lot better.
While you’re running errands to the Christmas tree lot or the mall to buy gifts, consider a stop at a local homeless shelter to drop off something that you can afford to give up.
Here is a directory of homeless shelters around the country:
With a major election looming, there has been a lot of speculation and talk around the Bumvertising™ offices here in Seattle. Out of our own interest, we have started to ask our sign holding vagrants about their political affiliations. To no great surprise, they don’t care. When prodded further however, the bums have mentioned support for Nader, and other 3rd party candidates (some of whom haven’t run since 1988).
Now that we have a greater understanding of our advertising bums, what we still don’t understand is what type of voter would be completely undecided. These are people who aren’t necessarily bitter, distrustful, apathetic, and suspicious like our bums, but people who want to vote, and just haven’t had enough time to decide. We haven’t gotten very far in our assertions, although CNN has helped shed some light on these people, by showing a picture of one of their undecided ‘ireporters’.
As most people in the business world, and probably the 21st century in general, I find myself more and more glued to my computer. Ten years ago, my computer usage was more engaged, and more sporadic. Now, I find myself constantly checking in on the internet, but for less focused sessions. I might be having several conversations, or watching the news, whereas I used to sit down without distractions.
Thanks again to the company that advertises Strategic Domination on our Seattle vagrants, I have found a new gaming obsession, that I definitely recommend to others. I used to play a board game similar to this with my friends when I was younger. In any case, this is a great turn based game that doesn’t require a long attention span, or periods of intense engagement. I take turns as they come, trying to conquer the world.
In any case, check one of the great strategy games online, Imperial Takeover™ at the Strategy Game Network. It has a great community of players from all over the world.
Like most public ridicule, our agency generally comes under the most criticism for something that seems superficial and trivial - our name. Many of Bumvertising™’s opponents have little problem with the concept of offering a mutually beneficial situation to those who are less fortunate. They have a problem with it being called “Bumvertising™”.
We call it Bumvertising™ because our agency does not deal with shopping cart vagrants, traveling hobos, or tent cities. We deal with the professional sign holding bum, who seeks to support himself solely by the help of others. They hold cardboard signs to get by on a day to day basis, and we advertise on the bottom of those signs to support our business. I’ll explain their business, and how we work within it.
To get a rough idea of how Bumvertising™ plays in, we can look at a simple math problem. Let’s take Navy Dave. He holds a sign at the cross section of Northgate Way and the I-5 offramp. On average, let’s assume he makes $40 per day, for an 8 hour shift of sign holding (without Bumvertising™ revenue.). That’s an average of $5/hour. Between both lanes, each stoplight has a backup of about 40 cars, and there are about 30 red lights per hour.
40 cars x 30 stoplights = 1200 cars per hour drive by Navy Dave.
1200 cars x 8 hours = 9,600 cars per day.
9,600cars/$40 bumming income = $0.0042, or about half a penny per car.
On average, each car that passes Navy Dave, gives him almost half a penny. What’s more likely, is that for every 200 cars that pass him, someone gives him $1. That would be one person about every 6-7 stoplights, or about every 12-14 minutes.
Bumvertising™ comes in and contracts his services by paying him an additional amount; combined with food and water, that amount equals about $10 for an 8 hour day.
Bumvertising™ pays about $0.001 per car that passes by, increasing Navy Dave’s total income by nearly 25%. All he has to do is attach our Strategic Domination sign onto his own.
Our site recently got a flood of new traffic. While sifting through the server logs, it looks like Italy just discovered Bumvertising™. The Italians have taken particular interest to our new Bumvertising™ video series.
While continuing my search through our server logs, I came upon many, many more discussions I couldn’t understand. Here’s one from what I believe to be Poland:
I’m happy that our advertiser, Strategic Domination, takes players from all over the world. They claim to be getting a lot of international players, which is great!
I also found a ton of Spanish and Mexican marketing sites discussing the concept, and here’s one from Brazil. I’m pretty sure it’s in Portuguese:
Something has changed in the last couple weeks. There are new faces on the corners. Bum encampments have more people, and we are having a much easier time finding corners to advertise on. Our advertising beggars are coming in to the sign holding business with less and less experience. Sadly, it looks like more people are becoming homeless by the day.
As any American, I’m concerned about the current economic state in this country. Even though this means more advertising resources for us and our sponsor, Strategic Domination™, it’s sad to see the American economic system fail, and push people out on the other end.
Half hour rules are becoming more enforced, and good corners are almost always occupied by beggars. We have taken the design of our old signs, and started ordering them in bulk from a new source to meet demand on the streets. Good luck, America.
If you are a regular visitor to this site, you may have a noticed a new application on the front page of Bumvertising.com. The company that owns Strategic Domination has created a new type of intersite game, that we have been invited to take part in.
The game, Kingdoms and Catapults, is a site to site game, which is played by forming different website teams that compete against each other. Visitors of each website are the players on each team. Websites compete for land, which raises them up on the score list, thus leading to more site traffic. It’s a great new idea, and we’re thrilled to participate.
Just since adding the Kingdoms and Catapults application, we’ve seen a traffic boost from other sites in the network. They’re also giving us a chunk of advertising space so that we can get the word out about our Bumvertising™ video series.
If you are a visitor to this site, please help our team by building walls, land, and catapults and attacking other sites in the network. If you are a blogger, or run your own website or forum, I encourage you to create your own team.
We’re making progress by leaps and bounds at Bumvertising™ right now. It’s important to give credit to our current advertiser for making this possible. On blogs and discussion groups around the world, people have been discussing the merits of advertising on bums. They’ve been discussing what products would most benefit from bum sign exposure, and how the ROI compares to more conventional advertising methods.
Strategic Domination, our current advertiser, looked at what we had to offer and told us this. “We just want people to go to our website and try our game. Despite some controversy, this is the most cost effective form of advertising we’ve encountered,” says Reuben Maxwell, President of Gaming Development at StrategicDomination.com. “It doesn’t matter who is holding the sign. Advertising is advertising.”
Strategic Domination is a multiplayer online war strategy game. The game is played with 8 people on a map, and takes place over the course of a 10 day period. It’s a very unique game and extremely fun and addictive.
If anyone remembers the old Macintosh game Strategic Conquest, or the old PC games Empire or Xconq - Strategic Domination is similar. It’s loosely based on those games, but has been refurbished to be online and multiplayer.
If you’ve played the game, let us know what you think, and we’ll pass the info on to our advertiser.
Nobody really thought bums had it easy. They have few luxuries, poor hygiene, and dirty clothes. What else do most vagrants suffer from? Lots of head colds, some respiratory infections, perhaps?
Our dealings with our advertising vagabonds have been very professional since Bumvertising™’s inception. We inquire to their experience in sign holding, their daily goals, and migration patterns when it affects the exposure to our advertisers. As part of the new Bumvertising video series, we are attempting to explore some of the more human aspects of our bums.
In Episode#3 of Bumvertising™, The Sign Business is a Fine Business, we may have stepped a little bit too far into their world. Ridicule, assault, and death are all parts of their daily existence.
Let me first state that we have NEVER had a single altercation or negative experience with a contracted Bumvertising™ vagrant. All dealings with bums that we have contracted to advertise have been pleasant and professional.
Recently, however, during a filming of our new Bumvertising™ Ride Along series, we came into a fairly adverse situation and were forced to run no less than a mile, being chased by more than one angry bum.
We were filming Bumvertising™ Episode #2: Give me a Sign, interviewing Jeff, a 3 year veteran of Bumvertising. Without any warning, an angry bum came out of the bushes yelling and charging right at us. With heavy traffic to the right of us, and in front of us, we had very few avenues toward which to escape. Trapped in a corner, the angry bum approached us for the attack. We asked him to move back several times, but were forced to use defensive spray to keep him at a distance.
Stunning the bum with a facefull of pepper spray, we escaped through the bushes where he had come from. To our chagrin, we were forced to run through an entire encampment of loitering drunkards. A fast jog turned into a mile long sprint, being aggressively pursued by a bum intent on stealing our filming equipment. Fortunately, we were able to get to our car before he was, escape and speed off. Everybody got back to the office safe and sound.
Our conversation with Jeff was interesting, cordial, and entirely professional before we were attacked. What started as a simple confrontation by a jealous onlooking bum escalated into a full-on threat to the safety of our team and our equipment.
