Do you love a brand enough to get it inked on your body?
There are plenty of reasons to get a tattoo design depicting one of your favourite brands. From showing your loyalty to becoming part of the tribe, a tattoo can help to define your identity.
As Professor Viren Swami, an expert on body image, told NAAMA in a recent interview, “tattooing as a marker of group identity is an old idea.”
Brands like Heinz know how powerful group identity can be. The best of them speak back to their loyally inked fans in their marketing and communications.
According to Forbes, there can be a financial incentive too. One anonymous company "has offered a 15% pay increase, on the spot, to anyone who’ll put the company trademark on their body."
(The sound of everyone at NAAMA rushing to get a tattoo just in case, knowing full well they can remove it).
Here’s a brief look at the world of brand-love-so-strong-must-get-inked fans.
YEEZY COME, YEEZY GO: A FORMER FAN REMOVES THEIR KANYE TATTOO
"When you have a tattoo inspired by someone you admire and they start making headlines for all the wrong reasons, it's not exactly something you want to wear on your sleeve."
Heinz dips into the world of tattoo ink
After we discovered that Heinz had collaborated with a Brazilian ink manufacturer to create their own safe red tattoo ink, we were keen to find out more about the hordes of fans emblazoned with the famous 57 bottle.
We caught up with Lottie, a US-based ketchup connoisseur, to chat about her unique Heinz tattoo.
“I'm a trashy Midwestern person, so I've always had ketchup with everything,” Lottie jokes.
“In college when you’re discovering more about yourself and trying to find out what your quirks are - because it’s cool to have a shtick – I decided, I'm obsessed with ketchup.”
For Lottie, the essential food product trumps all else.
“I hate it when fancy places have in-house, you know, tomato blueberry compote. I’m like, is that instead of ketchup?”
It is not only Heinz that has inspired such zealous brand loyalty expressed through the medium of body art.
“I hate it when fancy places have in-house, you know, tomato blueberry compote. I’m like, is that instead of ketchup?”
Plenty of other brands have a loyally-inked fanbase. Here are just some of them:
Thrasher Magazine
Thrasher Magazine has perhaps the most recognisable and spoofed logo of any publication out there.
Banco, the typeface designed by Roger Excoffon in the 1950s, has been used for pretty much every product imaginable after Thrasher brought it to prominence.
Monster Energy
Monster Energy addressed their fans directly in a Tweet on this very topic: “show us your Monster tattoo. You will be compensated for your dedication.”
At any of their motorsports or action sports events you’re bound to spot at least a few people with the green claw tatted somewhere.
And on Instagram, you’ll find 46.5k posts dedicated to the claw.
Harry Potter
In the world of wizard tattoos the more arcane the better.
A cursory flick through any online gallery of Potter tatts shows some serious dedication to the dark art of ink-based homage.
No longer a fan?
If you quit skateboarding for riding bikes, got into sparkling water, or got over your Potter phase, have no fear, laser tattoo removal is the way to remove a no longer loved tattoo.
The LightSense™ laser is skin-kind and the least painful on the market. It is also adept at removing coloured ink, in case you got your Potter tatt in technicolour, like some ardent fans.
Follow the link here to book a consultation and patch test and find out just what you could achieve with laser tattoo removal, from clearing to cover-up.
