According to the Chicago Tribune, a 16-year old high school student in Chicago has found a, er, novel way of promoting Ayn Rand’s books:
WILMETTE — Marlo Goldstein wanted to be different, and she likely will be with an Ayn Rand advertisement on her backpack when New Trier Township High School opens Wednesday.
She thought up the idea of auctioning her backpack space on eBay, and Jeffrey Leone of Wilmington bit. He paid $102.50 to promote Rand, a writer and philosopher, for six weeks.
Leone, 44, a general contractor, said Goldstein’s target audience was a good fit for Rand’s work, including “The Fountainhead.”
“It’s a very popular book with high school students, and I’m a supporter of the Ayn Rand Institute,” Leone said of the Irvine, Calif.-based group. “I wanted to reward her originality and creativity, both virtues that are personified in `The Fountainhead.'”
Goldstein, 16, of Wilmette said the advertising idea came from some friendly family competition and other eBay auctions.
“I wanted something different, that no one else had done,” she said. “I talked it over with my parents, and we weren’t going to accept anything inappropriate. That’s why we set the opening bid at $99.”
Goldstein, who said she will be trying to maintain an A average as a junior and hopes to study engineering in college, designed the ad.
For Leone, “The only expectations I have are similar to putting up a regular billboard, and that’s to raise awareness of the institute and the book.”