Tapinko Archive

In late 2008 all the rage was around people becoming advertising by selling parts of themselves for cash. No no I’m not talking about the paid twitter shilling that we see today. Two of the services that launched during this period were GirlInYourShirt and IwearYourShirt. Even with a big Techcrunch launch, it seemed that GirlInYourShirt slowly fizzled after a few months. IwearYourShirt seems to still be going on today which is pretty impressive. Check out our post about the launch of both advertising opportunities.

This morning, Jenaé Plymale, the founder of GirlInYourShirt noted on Twitter that she is bringing this back bigtime for 2010. You can watch the video below — here are the basic updates:

• you will still be able to buy her for a show where she wears your tshirt and talks about your product for a minute
• she is launching (yet another) tech news video show – she is looking for sponsors – I am wondering if she will be going all Nascar jacket style for the show where she will wear like two dozen logos on her shirt

The big news is that she has partnered with outsourced offline ad management service Tapinko. We first covered Tapinko when they launched and I assume they will be handling the transactions for this new “marketing service”. You will now be able to rent “Girls In Your Shirt”. Jenae notes:

“we can now round up any size group of sorority girls and college girls to execute a marketing campaign for you on campuses nationwide. Our girls will be committed to wearing your shirt, distributing your flyers– talk about viral marketing! If that’s not enough for you, our girls will also throw you a professional college party — complete with plenty of invitations and a perfect opportunity to run product testing for your company”

She continues (my emphasis):
Continue reading “GirlInYourShirt Partners With Tapinko for Branded Sorority Parties” »

Tapinko is one of the startups to come out of the DreamIT startup incubator. Tapinko President Peter Groverman opened the presentation by explaining that there’s currently no place to purchase multiple offline ads (e.g. to purchase in every newspaper in Philly). My initial thought was that Google provides this type of offline newspaper ad buying already.

Peter took us through his presentation and overall I was very impressed with the service. Basically the Tapinko service is an outsourced offline ad management application. The service makes it easy for offline media to sell ads online. Tapinko only charges a transaction fee when sellers make a purchase which basically leaves no reason for media companies not to try it. The service can work with any offline advertising including outdoor advertising (i.e. billboards).

They are currently working with a variety of college daily newspapers in the Northeast with a 3-5 year plan to move into local publications and magazines. A 3-5 year plan is way too long – by then Google will own the space and/or the space will transform yet again. If they want to own this space, they need to buildout the "mall" of offline advertising options and sign-on as many partners as possible.