• by Larry Dobrow , Featured Columnist, July 29, 2005

So the phone rings late one Friday night a few weeks back. When I answer, I hear a friend babbling over a cacaphony of: "Models ... Suede ... DVDs ... models ... "Entourage"... models ... TV screens!" I'm confused, though the words I hear represent the perfect mix of this particular individual's interests. I feign a bad cell connection and hang up quickly.

The next morning I learn that my friend had been watching a stunt perpetuated by Free Car Media, which were tapped by HBO to promote the DVD release of its comedy "Entourage." The firm outfitted a gaggle of fetching young lasses in LCD "screen shirts" that showed a 60-second clip of the show, then sent them to parade in front of hip New York clubs. "We told [the models] to work the lines. That's where the people are most bored," quips Free Car president Drew Livingston. Let's state the obvious, that gals wearing TV tops are a hell of a lot more likely to catch the consumer's eye than the 72,365,343rd HBO bus-shelter placard.

So are other marketers game? "The clients like it once they've been a part of it, but the initial sell is tough," Livingston admits. "I'm seeing more [out-of-home] being put into budgets for 2006, though, which is a good start."