• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, January 17, 2007

The U.S. Army and youth-marketing company Zim2 (pronounced "Zim Squared") are planning to distribute free packs of tissues containing branded messages from the U.S. Army to thousands of New York City high school students. The message: stay in school.

The tissues, created by marketing firm AdPack, are part of the U.S. Army's "Boost" campaign, which wants to raise high-school graduation rates. The logo of the U.S. Army appears along with the Ad Council, which helped organize the event.

Zim2 procures free products for schools by presenting school wish-lists to corporate sponsors that include their brand symbols on the products. Although "stay in school" messages might seem uncontroversial, Jeremy Weiner, president of Zim2, says he always confers with school administrators about the design and content before they are distributed. Administrators are allowed to return any products they consider unsatisfactory at no charge.

"A lot of these schools are in desperate need of some basic supplies," Weiner adds. At one school, teachers were substituting toilet paper for facial tissues. "There, AdPack is a perfect match." In total, Zim2 has relationships with about 100,000 schools, libraries, camps, and youth service organizations around the country.

The U.S. Army partnership is a coup for AdPack, which is pushing to popularize free packages of facial tissues as a major promotional channel. Although using tissue packs as ad platforms is relatively new in the U.S., it has been an established medium since the 1970s in Japan.

In a September interview, Steve Jacobs, president of AdPack USA, said: "It's so successful and ubiquitous in society, that the retail business for facial tissues in Japan is the smallest in the world." About 4 billion free promotional tissue packs are distributed every year in Japan, at a total cost of about $1 billion.