If there are still college students who use notebooks versus laptops for note taking then a new company called Unotes just might have an interesting new method of advertising to the hard to reach demographic segment. Launching in January, Unotes plans to take the lowly 5-subject notebook and turn it into an ad medium selling glossy four color divider pages, the back cover and watermarked pages and using that revenue to provide the notebooks to students for free. There’s a charity angle as well with part of the proceeds going to First Book, an organization that provides books to children of low income families. We’ve seen the prototype and we like what we see. The program will role out nationally in September.
Along with Unotes notebooks, the website yet to launch Unotes.info will offer a virtual world of sorts which will mimick a college campus and college town complete with, yes, embedded brand promotions and other good stuff such as branded ringtones, MP3s, screensavers, wallpaper, buddy icons, video clips and advergames. It’s not up yet so we can’t comment on its viability though it’s intended specifically not to be a Facebook-like place but rather an environment full of deals which studdents can seek out.
