These Russian companies are selling ads on women’s breasts

Forget about expensive billboards, fliers that no one reads and annoying internet pop-up ads.

At least two companies in Russia have come up with a more eye-catching place to advertise a brand: a woman’s breasts.

Seriously.

Tittygram — yep, that really is its name — opened its doors in the western city of Ulyanovsk earlier this year. Then came TiTiSign.com, which popped up in Novosibirsk, the de-facto capital of Siberia, just this week.

For less than $10, a business can have its brand scrawled across a woman’s chest and breasts  — which, in most cases, are partially covered by a sexy bra for, you know, the sake of decency — and published online.

Sending a tittygram is pretty straightforward, according to the brief instructions on the company’s English language website. The same goes for TiTisign (except its own English version, boobs4sign.com, doesn't appear to be functional just yet.)

For both services, an advertiser submits a message of 35 characters or fewer and within an hour they receive a shareable link to their final product: a photo of a model displaying their message on her breasts.

Other parts of the body are fair game, too — at least for TiTiSign.

Just so long as they don't break the limits of decency, says Alexei Gavrilov, one of its founders.

"We don't want any problems with either the law or public opinion," he told local news site Sib.Fm on Monday. 

Meanwhile, Tittygram, which describes its service as the Uber for boobs (again, we are not joking), has reportedly hired several models, who receive up to $100 a day for their anonymous services. It's also signed up dozens of advertisers, including, apparently, Finnish airline Finnair.

No doubt more advertisers will flock to the service following Russian media coverage of the provocative website, which only appears to post advertisements in Russian at this stage. The reaction on social media has been mixed. 

While advertising on breasts might sound like an offensive way of drawing attention to a brand, don’t worry.

Tittygram claims to donate 2 percent of its proceeds to breast cancer research.

And Gavrilov, the TiTiSign co-founder, even says there's no discrimination against breast size.

"As a rule, girls working in this field have something on which to write," he said. "But there are men in the world who like different breast sizes, so everyone has a chance."

Well, that’s ok then. 

Dan Peleschuk contributed to this story.