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Sic Transit Gloria...Or Go Where the Eyes Are
June 23, 2008

You may have noticed that, oh, gas prices have increased substantially in the past several years—and last month finally tipped over $4 a gallon and in some places (Northern California) has already zeroed in on $5 a gallon. As I write this, oil per barrel has tempered somewhat, but it’s a safe bet that gas won’t be coming down any time soon, if ever.

Naturally, there is a “trickle down” effect; the high costs of fuel mean that any other commodity that must be transported correspondingly increases. The airlines, for example, faced with extremely high fuel costs, have passed the expenses on to the consumer, charging for checked baggage and who knows what other creative fees they will come up with.

As a result, the news has not been short of stories about how mass transit ridership is up:

Some cities with long-established public transit systems, like New York and Boston, have seen increases in ridership of 5 percent or more so far this year. But the biggest surges — of 10 to 15 percent or more over last year — are occurring in many metropolitan areas in the South and West where the driving culture is strongest and bus and rail lines are more limited.

Here in Denver, for example, ridership was up 8 percent in the first three months of the year compared with last year, despite a fare increase in January and a slowing economy, which usually means fewer commuters. Several routes on the system have reached capacity, particularly at rush hour, for the first time.
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Transit systems in metropolitan areas like Minneapolis, Seattle, Dallas-Fort Worth and San Francisco reported similar jumps. In cities like Houston, Nashville, Salt Lake City, and Charlotte, N.C., commuters in growing numbers are taking advantage of new bus and train lines built or expanded in the last few years. The American Public Transportation Association reports that localities with fewer than 100,000 people have also experienced large increases in bus ridership.

The time may now be right to look at one of the unsung heroes of marketing and advertising: outdoor. Specifically, public transit advertising. The Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA) tells us that:

Out of home advertising industry revenue grew 3.0% in the first quarter of 2008, accounting for $1.6 billion in advertising expenditures.

Media spending in six of the top ten categories, ranked by outdoor advertising spending, increased quarter over quarter.  The Financial category showed strong growth, increasing $15.9 million (16.1%) over the first quarter in 2007.
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Revenue in the Miscellaneous Services & Amusements category increased $12.3 million for the quarter, accounting for 16.2% of all spending in outdoor.  Historically a leading category in outdoor spending, this category has posted consistent gains since the first quarter of 2002, when spending declined by 0.7%.

The following categories also posted gains for the first quarter:  Public Transportation, Hotels & Resorts (6.0%); Restaurants (5.9%); Retail (5.7%); and Automotive, Auto Accessories & Equipment (1.6%).

Outdoor advertising has never gone away, but has often been given short shrift thanks to the attention lavished on online and other new media.

The OAAA also tells us that seven out of 10 outdoor ads promote local businesses, and that for national advertisers, outdoor is typically part of a larger media mix (quel surprise).

Outdoor can be as simple as a static printed poster or as complex as large interactive electronic displays. If you’ve ever been to Times Square—in the past or present—you know that there are no limits to what can be done with billboards. Douglas Leigh’s Camel billboard—which debuted in Times Square on December 12, 1941, and featured smoke rings generated by steam blown through a giant bellows—is said to be the world’s most famous sign. (More examples can be found at the Smithsonian and online here.) Electronic displays are in many places replacing static print billboards. Some signs encourage viewers to send text messages (at sporting events, for example, which can take the form of contests), and there have even been experiments with incorporating transmitters into signs so that the sign can “call” a user’s cellphone as s/he passes by. Not surprisingly, that hasn’t received a great deal of traction, as it is more that slightly intrusive, but as mobile marketing continues to evolve, new strategies will exploit the integration of signage and other print and electronic media. (We may reach the point where the distinction between “signage” and “television” is merely academic.)

Back to the essential point of this post, though; if current trends continue, mass transit ridership will continue to rise—providing the perfect captive audience for transit marketing.

I will provide some further considerations for transit advertising—and outdoor in particular—in Wednesday’s post.

I also hasten to mention that outdoor advertising plays an important symbolic role in one of the greatest novels of all time (The Great Gatsby):

[A]bove the gray land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their irises are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness, or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days, under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground.

It would be difficult to imagine a banner ad being effectively used as the symbolic representation of divine Providence.

Posted by Richard Romano on June 23, 2008 | Comments (0)