Tattoos, marketing, and social media / Marc Jacobs GOOD, Chris Brown BAD.

“Tattoos are like stories – they’re symbolic of the important moments in your life. Sitting down, talking about where you got each tattoo and what it symbolizes, is really beautiful.”

Pamela Anderson, actress, model, thinker.

Back in the day, tattoos were for nameless sailors, Polish jailbrids and Millwall fans. Now they don’t scare old ladies anymore, and are taking over the stage, catwalks and Vogue’s cover.

Tattoos sell. As usual, some do things the right way, others just make everybody go “WTF?”

GOOD.

Here comes – surprise, surprise – Marc Jacobs. His funny tattoos are the man’s trademark, and reflect the brand’s philosophy: be cool, stylish, ironic, witty and classy. Be unconventional, original and adventurous, but know where to stop before losing the plot.

Here’s a picture of Mr. Jacobs getting inked by Scott Cambell; MJ is so in love with the man’s art, he recruited him for the Louis Vuitton SS11 menswear presentation in Paris.

Last year, Rick Genest(AKA Zombie Boy) became the star of the fall 2011 Mugler men’s campaign, after the brand’s creative director (and Lady Gaga’s stylist) spotted him on Facebook. Weird, but Win.

BAD.

“Artist” Chris Brown, famous for savaging attacking Rihanna a while ago, came up with a genius marketing idea: a neck tattoo depicting what looks like a beaten woman.

The internet went mad: ‘sickening’, ‘disgusting’, ‘tasteless’, and less family-friendly words bounced all over the web. According to Social Mention, the “artist”’s name has been mentioned every 14 seconds, this week.

The “artist” said it’s not Rihanna, his agent and the tattooer said the same.

The State News wrote: ‘Whether it was intentional or just a happy coincidence, we probably will never know. But what we can say for certain is that his alleged plan is working. On Tuesday, “Chris Brown tattoo” was the fourth-highest search on Google with over 100,000 searches in the U.S. alone. But with celebrity news changing daily, I doubt the spotlight will stay on Brown very long. But even if the conversation dies down, that tattoo is staying put, and as long as it does, it takes the form of whatever the audience sees it as. As far as the audience is concerned, Brown just got a tattoo highlighting the worst part of him.’

Is it working? We don’t think so. Here’s a picture of the sticker some guy put on the “artist”’s CDs, at MHV.

The “artist”’s Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/chrisbrown

has been silent for a while, and no comments are to be found anywhere.

What do you think?

London Web Agency Appnova – keep following us on Twitter @appnova and “like” us on Facebook for useful news and tasteful digressions about geeky stuff.