Advertising VIa Subway Window Vibrations?

I'm betting this is a hoax or some sort of marketing student project, but I found a truly disturbing idea on line:

Some people think Flo from the Progressive
Insurance ads is annoying. Will she
broadcast from a subway window near you?

They'd transmit advertising into your head via the vibrations you get from a subway window as the train clatters down the tracks.

Here's the thinking, hoax or not: A lot of commuters are tired and lean their heads against subway windows in an attempt to take a nap or just rest. The window vibrates with the motion of the train, of course.

Why not harness the vibrations to form an advertisement that only you can hear via the window vibrations?  Because we all want to hear more, more, more, more advertising, right?

Yeah, right.

Here's the allegedly promotional YouTube video of the idea:




In a world where advertising just permeates everything, do we really need this from desperate marketers?

I've never understood how so many of the people in the advertising world think if they annoy us, we'll buy their product.

There are innovative advertisements out there that I see and hear occasionally that are cool, and actually make me pay attention to what they're trying to sell.

But the vast majority of ads are stupid, with people yelling at us to buy stuff, or talking to us like we're toddlers, or using the most basic, stupid attempts at humor. And the repetition!

They annoy us, we're told, because the annoying ads get into our brains and linger, increasing the recognition of the brand in question.

That's true, we do think of the brand when their advertising annoys us, but being pissed off about a company's ad doesn't want to make me do business with them. If their ad is that bad, their product must be worse, is my line of thinking.

Maybe the advertisers are just completely clueless about how to sell their stuff, as David Pogue suggested in the New York Times. 

Overall, it's interesing, though, that in a Google search, I could find no information, at least in a cursory search, of why advertisers think annoying their audience is effective and sell products.

So I guess we'll have to deal with the spread of advertisers trying to make our lives miserable. It has really spread online. It could spread to subway windows, if the news I mention above is not a hoax.

What's next. Will advertising executives break into our houses at 2 a.m. to sing bad versions of product jingles?  If that ever happens, I'd certainly embrace the Second Amendment more, that's for sure.