Evening Standard: Urinals, bananas - and other new places to advertise
Urinals, bananas, sandwich bags - nowhere is safe from adverts these days. David Rowan reports on the boom in unlikely commercial sites
IF banks are boringly conventional ad clients, then Smile is a banana. Two-hundred thousand bananas, to be precise - each one currently being transformed into an advertising medium to rival a mere 64-sheet poster. As the late-summer crop is being picked on a Surinam plantation, workers are affixing stickers to each fruit bearing the online bank's logo and the slogan 'Top banana'.
'Advertising on fruit isn't really what you'd expect from a bank,' admits Bob Head, Smile's chief executive, who bought the idea from its ad agency, Farm Communications. He will be the one smiling if the bananas - arriving in Coop stores next week - succeed in attracting consumers' ever-shorter attention.
It might be a gloomy time for the broadcast and print ad markets, but one industry sector - say it quietly - is still talking of sustained growth, rising profits, even job security. It's called ambient advertising, and it's on a roll - with everybody from Sony to the Evening Standard looking for increasingly inventive ways to grab your attention.
Ambient media encompasses the range of evermore unorthodox locations where ads can be squeezed, from the Millennium Dome's roof - last week refused planning permission to display Smint's logo - to the pub urinal. As TV audiences fragment, advertisers are constantly looking for new ways of reaching us - whether we're relieving ourselves or ordering a tuna melt.
'Advertising on sandwich bags is a no-brainer,' says David Landsberg, managing director of Bag Media, whose paper bags and napkins have become an integral part of the takeaway lunch. The Evening Standard and Marmite are among advertisers covering 60,000 bags issued per working hour. 'With so much clutter on TV and in the streets, it's a way for clients to reach an audience where they want to be, targeting at a much more fragmentable level,' Landsberg says.
He founded the business four years ago after two decades in the packaging industry, and demand has recently become so great, he says, that the company is about to diversify into kebab wrappers and off-licence bags. If you want to target painters and decorators, he can offer you a package of bacon-butty bags, sent to the nation's greasy-spoons - all for less than a penny a bag.
Like many in the industry, Landsberg is uncomfortable with the term 'ambient media', which conjures up images of stunts and flyposting, and prefers to talk about 'support media'. But however it's defined, the ambient sector is estimated to have grown in value last year by a third, to more than £80 million - with London agencies in the vanguard. And, increasingly, mainstream brands are choosing to use it.
Cunning Stunts, based in Hatton Garden, recently launched a nationwide fly-posting campaign for the Mini, which it says attracted just two complaints from local councils. It has run a seven-city pavement 'chalk art' campaign to promote Vodafone, hung gigantic Levi jeans above busy shopping streets, and floated a giant football pitch down the Thames for Dockers. 'The objective is to get people talking,' says Anna Carloss, Cunning Stunts' MD. 'You've got to be cheeky and quirky to gain coverage.'
Sometimes, though, even a mainstream brand can prove too radical. Mark Stanley runs Alvern Forecourt Media, which sells space on petrolpump nozzles to advertisers including Cadbury's. 'We made the fatal mistake recently of running a campaign for the Conservative Party,' Stanley confides. 'We'll never do that again: just about every Labour councillor who filled up complained.'
You're not even safe nowadays in the washroom. Captive View, which glamorously defines itself as a 'public-toilet media specialist', has been busily filling London bars with Viewrinals - video screens mounted to urinals that use sensors to count the number of users. The screens are soon going nationwide, to advertise products ranging from Supernoodles to 20th Century Fox videos. 'Anywhere there's a captive audience, advertisers want to be,' says Captive View's MD, Ronnie Rees.
Demand for the service is growing fast - although, to be fair, not all brands would find the medium suitable. The Conservative Party, for one, has not yet enquired about booking space.
(Evening Standard, August 29 2001)
IF banks are boringly conventional ad clients, then Smile is a banana. Two-hundred thousand bananas, to be precise - each one currently being transformed into an advertising medium to rival a mere 64-sheet poster. As the late-summer crop is being picked on a Surinam plantation, workers are affixing stickers to each fruit bearing the online bank's logo and the slogan 'Top banana'.
'Advertising on fruit isn't really what you'd expect from a bank,' admits Bob Head, Smile's chief executive, who bought the idea from its ad agency, Farm Communications. He will be the one smiling if the bananas - arriving in Coop stores next week - succeed in attracting consumers' ever-shorter attention.
It might be a gloomy time for the broadcast and print ad markets, but one industry sector - say it quietly - is still talking of sustained growth, rising profits, even job security. It's called ambient advertising, and it's on a roll - with everybody from Sony to the Evening Standard looking for increasingly inventive ways to grab your attention.
Ambient media encompasses the range of evermore unorthodox locations where ads can be squeezed, from the Millennium Dome's roof - last week refused planning permission to display Smint's logo - to the pub urinal. As TV audiences fragment, advertisers are constantly looking for new ways of reaching us - whether we're relieving ourselves or ordering a tuna melt.
'Advertising on sandwich bags is a no-brainer,' says David Landsberg, managing director of Bag Media, whose paper bags and napkins have become an integral part of the takeaway lunch. The Evening Standard and Marmite are among advertisers covering 60,000 bags issued per working hour. 'With so much clutter on TV and in the streets, it's a way for clients to reach an audience where they want to be, targeting at a much more fragmentable level,' Landsberg says.
He founded the business four years ago after two decades in the packaging industry, and demand has recently become so great, he says, that the company is about to diversify into kebab wrappers and off-licence bags. If you want to target painters and decorators, he can offer you a package of bacon-butty bags, sent to the nation's greasy-spoons - all for less than a penny a bag.
Like many in the industry, Landsberg is uncomfortable with the term 'ambient media', which conjures up images of stunts and flyposting, and prefers to talk about 'support media'. But however it's defined, the ambient sector is estimated to have grown in value last year by a third, to more than £80 million - with London agencies in the vanguard. And, increasingly, mainstream brands are choosing to use it.
Cunning Stunts, based in Hatton Garden, recently launched a nationwide fly-posting campaign for the Mini, which it says attracted just two complaints from local councils. It has run a seven-city pavement 'chalk art' campaign to promote Vodafone, hung gigantic Levi jeans above busy shopping streets, and floated a giant football pitch down the Thames for Dockers. 'The objective is to get people talking,' says Anna Carloss, Cunning Stunts' MD. 'You've got to be cheeky and quirky to gain coverage.'
Sometimes, though, even a mainstream brand can prove too radical. Mark Stanley runs Alvern Forecourt Media, which sells space on petrolpump nozzles to advertisers including Cadbury's. 'We made the fatal mistake recently of running a campaign for the Conservative Party,' Stanley confides. 'We'll never do that again: just about every Labour councillor who filled up complained.'
You're not even safe nowadays in the washroom. Captive View, which glamorously defines itself as a 'public-toilet media specialist', has been busily filling London bars with Viewrinals - video screens mounted to urinals that use sensors to count the number of users. The screens are soon going nationwide, to advertise products ranging from Supernoodles to 20th Century Fox videos. 'Anywhere there's a captive audience, advertisers want to be,' says Captive View's MD, Ronnie Rees.
Demand for the service is growing fast - although, to be fair, not all brands would find the medium suitable. The Conservative Party, for one, has not yet enquired about booking space.
(Evening Standard, August 29 2001)
posted by David Rowan at Wednesday, August 29, 2001
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