Would you like some ads with that coffee?

We’re all for new business ideas and guerilla marketing tactics. However, it is a fact that some work, and many don’t.

Here’s one idea that raises some question marks.

It’s a business called freepapercups.com that provides free paper cups to offices carrying the ads of other companies who pay for the cups. The company’s proposition is that everyone wins – the recepient office saves on paper cup expenditure, coffee service providers get a new tool to save their customers money (and for themselves to possibly gain some share or the revenues?), and the advertiser gets to penetrate a previously untouched white-space. Who knows – this may work, just like the ads and logos painted on the roofs of white delivery vans.

However, the thing is this: paper cups – with ads or without – will get thrown away like yesterday’s newspaper and last month’s magazine. So, this would be another form of broadcast advertising whose effectiveness needs to be measured and proven, and it’s guilty (of waste) unless proven innocent.

Also, it is invasive to a great degree in a space that should be uncluttered with any messages other than what are relevant to the organization’s own business.

So, will it really contribute anything significant to the offices who won’t be spending on the paper cups, or to the brands that do spend to advertise on them? Or will it just detract from both?

What might be next – co-branded letterheads perhaps?

Lest I sound too much of a cynic, let me offer up a thought: maybe governments should put a new line item in their budgets – “Grant on expenditure on ceramic coffee cups for offices to carry environmental and fiscal-consciousness messages”.

A caffeine-laced economic stimulus – now that should get the economy going again!