A standee is an for a large self-standing display promoting a movie, product or event, or point-of-sale advertising, often in the form of a life-size cut-out figure. They are typically made of foam-board, and may range from large self-standing posters to elaborate three-dimensional display devices with moving parts and lights. Standees are typically displayed in theater lobbies or music stores in advance of film or music releases. In the movie business, the more bookings a theater makes in advance for a given film, the more likely it is to place standees in its lobby because of self-interest to spur consumer interest in its future screen offerings. Standees are also called lobby stands in the film industry. In recent years, theaters increasingly look to on-site advertising from non-movie companies as a revenue source, which creates occasional friction with film distributors; when standees for Paramount's incorporated a promotion for the 2003 movie's tie-in promotion with Jeep automobiles, large theater circuit Regal Cinemas sought payments from Jeep for the exposure in its theaters. Paramount reportedly shifted bookings from 47 Regal theaters to other cinemas that erected the Tomb Raider/Jeep standees without payments from Jeep. While standees have previously been available only in large quantities, recent advances in digital photography and print-on-demand technology have made them widely available to the public. Several companies now offer these items as partydecorations, gag gifts and memorial items for the deceased. Standees can now be purchased as one-off custom products, bringing them to the average consumer as well as large corporations and venues.
History
While mannequins have been used in advertising for fashion, the capacity to cheaply print large-sized images, especially in colour, has provided an eye-catching alternative for the advertising of other products. The production of such figurines evidently stretches from early in the 20th century; they appear in a photograph dating from 1917-1925 by Jessie Tarbox Beals, and others including a Santa Claus, appear lining the walls in Walker Evans' 1936 documentary image Coal Miner's House, Scott's Run, West Virginia. The term "standee" has been in use at least since 1933, when it appeared in the Motion Picture Herald. Especially well-known and effective internationally was the series of figurines created for a 1947 L'Oréalcampaign by French advertising photographer Lucien Lorelle for which the model known only as 'Suzy B', became "Miss Ambre Solaire"; a life-size cut-out of her bikini-clad and tanned body stood at the entrance of the shops and pharmacies of French seaside resorts until the end of the 50s to advertise L'Oréal's sun tan lotion formulated in 1935.
