Looking for innovative ways to promote your business? Body painting and face art is your answer to creating an innovative campaign.

​Images of Vegas acrobats, Hollywood starlets and magazine cover girls’ flashes in our minds when we think of Body Painting. All these seem very hip and contemporary, but contrary to popular belief body painting is an ancient art. If historians are to be believed, body painting is perhaps the first art form practiced by mankind. Enough evidence can be found in the Asian, African, European and Australia cultures to support the claim of body painting being the first art form mankind ever practiced. 

​Body painting is a form of expression and communication just like any other art forms. Body painting transforms the human body into a beautiful canvas depicting the story an artist is portraying. Back in ancient history people painted their body for cultural, social and spiritual reasons. Weddings, religious functions, funerals are a few examples. Even today certain cultures in Asia and Africa practice some forms of body painting as an act of expression.

Body painting has come a long way in modern times. Today there are festivals and art galleries dedicated to showcasing the art of body painting. Body painting has changed forms and evolved from being a form of individual communication and art of blending in, to becoming a form of mass communication. One very evident change here is that body and face painting are no longer used to blend it. It is becoming a form of vocalization and has made a lot of difference in how people regard body painting and other forms of body art today.

This change is a great opportunity for any one individual or a corporate house to capitalize on. One of the most frequently stated points when discussing advertising is the fear of advertise being lost in the clutter. Today we are bombarded with hundreds if not thousands of advertisers and promotional content the moment we step out of our house, switch on the television, tune the radio on or simply surf social networking sites. Humans are receiving promotional content like never before. In this onslaught of advertisers, advertisers have less than a second to make an impression.

Commercial Body Paint Campaign for Jims Fitness by Lynn Schockmel - photo by Marco Mazzini

We, humans, are restless beings and we tend to have short attention spans. If an advertiser wants to hold on to the viewers’ attention, the ad they design needs to be really innovative and different from the other ads present on the platform. The uniqueness of the ad will prompt the audience to take a minute and actually watch the ad rather than just flipping to the next channel or scrolling to the next post.

Body painting and body art is your answer to creating unique advertisements with enticing content so that viewers would be intrigued to watch it. Body painting instant brings the memories of that Vegas Acrobat or that dance performance that you witnessed on television were in the performers had paint on their bodies. You must have seen hundreds of dance performances and watched tens of shows in Vegas, but you still remember the vividly painted acrobat and dancers clearly and can also describe the patterns and recall the colors on their bodies. This is because it was different and it managed the break the pattern of other performances.

Advertising is all about being unique and communicating the message in an innovative yet effective way. Advertisers can achieve their goal of making unique yet meaningful advertisements by using human bodies as their canvas and depicting their message through paints on the human body. This will result in one of its kind ad campaigns. These videos ads have the potential to go viral and in today’s social media driven world nothing can make you more famous than going viral. These ads can be poster ads, print ads or videos, here the medium of presenting the ads isn’t important, the concept and the portal of the content hold the most gravity.

Captain America inspired Body Paint for a car event by Lynn Schockmel - photo by Marco Mazzini

While creative advertising is the key, ads aren’t limited to television, print media or social media. Advertising is present in all walks of life. Live shows and sponsored events are also vehicles of advertising. Body painting and body art can be used by advertisers to make their display stand out. If a cosmetic company uses tastefully body painted models in an art show to claim that their products are free of toxic chemicals and are thus safe for extensive use, this is guaranteed to attract the attention of the audience. Another such example would be automobile companies using body painted models during auto shows. Models can be painted to camouflage themselves with the background and then their entry can be choreographed in a dramatic way. These advertising tactics are bound to attract eyeballs.

Android Body Paints for a construction & architecture event by Lynn Schockmel - photo by Marco Mazzini

While body painting is an innovative medium to be used in advertising, it is also a lot more price effective than hiring stars and spending millions on ad campaigns which may still go unnoticed by the audience. There are a lot of myths surrounding body painting as an art form and thus mainstream media is reluctant to accept it. Body painting is seen as an equivalent to nudity and is thus avoided. As a body painting artist, I can say that nudity is not a prerequisite for body painting. Another popular myth is that body painting is only for female models. This too isn’t true. Let’s just say body painting isn’t gender biased and all human beings are welcome to become a canvas. Body painting isn’t a singular art and getting the entire body painted isn’t the only option. The extent of paint can vary based on the advertiser's needs and demands of the advertisement concept. Face painting is, in fact, a very popular form of body painting and so are temporary tattoos inked on various parts of the body.
Body painting and communicating through images and colours artistically painted on human beings is an untapped medium when it comes to advertising. This medium shows promise owing to its uniqueness and thus should be used to communicate the message to the audience. ​

Follow my blog with Bloglovin