I'm going to run a small experiment involving viral and guerilla marketing. The scheme: I will promote my website using simple ads that will be secretly hidden in books and movie rental cases. Myself and the few members of my site have designed some print-out templates for this plan. I'd like to see, or potentially track, how many people see the ads and join the site. If you'd like to help me out, you can take part in the experiment by placing these ads in books at a bookstore or under the DVD's (and games) you rent from your local Blockbuster (or whatever store you decide to rent your DVD's (and games) from). If I can get enough people, I think we will all see some really tangible results. It'll be interesting anyway. Just post or PM me. You can also email me at jacobsimon [(<at>)] expirationdate.info for more information.
I don't think there's a law that states you can't hide a piece of paper in a bookstore. If there is then, yes, you might get in trouble for doing this. But since there isn't, I don't think it would be that big of a problem.
maybe not, but there are laws governing advertising. You don't see big companies just leaving free adverts in loads of books for a reason.
Exactly, corporations are not going to be happy if you start using their stores for free advertising, and since you're as good as leaving your name and address, you can be quite sure that sooner or later your going to get a scary lawyers letter, citing some law that means you either stop, or they sue you into hell.
This is equivalent to leaving your phone number on a piece of paper in a book. There's no law, at least in my area of the world, that prohibits this as far as I know. And I would certainly hope the world hasn't come to the point where a bookstore would sue you for leaving things in their books. People on the internet are so pessimistic.
Bottom line is, it's unlikely that any company is going to be happy with you making money from their customers, by connecting to their customers in their store, which they paid for, when their customers should be paying attention to their stuff, not your advertising(however minimalist and quirky it might be). Pessimistic? Perhaps, or perhaps just being realistic. I'm not trying to put a damper on your enthusiasm, I'm just pointing out that there could be a very real problem with doing what you're going to do. At the very least you could be barred from chains nationwide.
I think it really depends on whether you are planning to make money from this project. If so, to continue your analogy, it would be like leaving a card advertising a premium rate phone number in a book. Oh and if I found one of these in a book, it would be going directly into the (recycling) bin, just like all those annoying flyers in magazines (the difference of course being the advertisers paid to have those there )
I'm sure they might be unhappy, but the point is that they can't do anything about it. It's equally unlikely that they would care enough to do anything about it; I'm just advertising a forum like this. It's not some intrusive ad that's trying to sell a competing product or make money from the stores' customers. I don't think you're being realistic specofdust, you're over reacting in fact. It's not that big of a deal. I just thought it would be interesting to see how many people would come to a forum where they can discuss the book/movie they found the ad in, or see what places in the world they come from. It's like adding a physical, shared aspect to internet communities. Imagine if all the visitors were connected to each other by means of a URL passed through pieces of literature and films that they were equally interested in. It's just a new way of inviting people to a chat.
The main problem I forsee is not from the store, though in the uk most shopping centres forbid advertising or leafleting without first getting permision, but from the book publishers. Think about it, customer buys book, customer finds card inside book, customer tends to think that card is authorised by book publisher, you would infact be trading of a respected publishing house's brand name with out offering anything to the publishing house. Lots of laws start to get crossed when it comes to property and advertising rights and chances are they have more expensive lawyers than you do.
I work for The Books Depository Which is Europe's biggest online book provider and some company's have been paying my boss to put advert's inside the book before they get sent, and he's making £££ of it. If he or anyone who runs a business was to find someone advertising in there service/goods without them knowing and making money or not i'm sure they would contact there lawers and try to sue your ass into your next life.