A marketing strategist shared the photo of "human ads" that showed men walking on a street with illuminated advertisement boards promoting a 10-minute food delivery service in Bengaluru. The image shows three men walking down a street at night highlighting the offer details for 10-minute food delivery app.

X user Roshan shared the photo in a post while joking about the marketing strategy for using people as advertisement boards. "VC: how much funding do you need? Startup: $5 million, VC: what's your customer acquisition plan, Startup: Human ads, VC: Take my money," he wrote in the caption of the post.

"This sucks. I would do it differently and not use human mules," he added.

Take a look at the post here:

What are human billboards?

Human billboards are common and have been used since the 19th century to advertise shops or offers. As advertising posters started to be taxed and competition for wall space became fierce, human billboards were used to advertise. Over the centuries, they have evolved to be illuminated electronic boards that can be carried on the back to advertise and grab attention.

Although they are common, the human billboards in the post were criticised by users on social media who labelled the practice as "extremely dehumanising".

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How social media reacted?

"Maybe it’s just me, but human ads make me so sad, they’re walking around with that heavy thing on their backs for god knows how long," wrote one user.

"I don't know how one sees this and doesn't feel sick in their stomach," said another user. "India with cheap labor at it's disposal, always ready to get exploited in multiple ways. This reminds me of people who used to hold lamps over their heads in shadi ki barat," read a comment.

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However, many others pointed out that such advertisements have been used by companies for a very long time to create a buzz on the streets about their product or service.

HT.com has reached out to Swish for a comment. This story will be updated when they respond.