You Are A Captive Audience

Here’s some miscellaneous links about advertisers seeing people in their everyday lives as a “captive audience” for their sales pitch. Enjoy!

Fillboard

Fillboard specializes in “handheld outdoor advertising” meaning they put ads on the pumps at gas stations. The site explains, “consumers interact with your with your ad during the 3-5 minute refueling process.” (What definition of interaction are they using?) And later boasts, “90% of respondents correctly recalled Fillboard advertising.” I think we can attribute some of this recognition to the initial shock of seeing advertising on a gas pump. This, of course, is the problem with ad creep; it works at first but eventually people stop noticing it. Then advertisers look further for places to put their messages, like escalator handrails, airplane overhead bins, eggs, bathroom urinals, stalls, and (soon) mirrors. Eventually Fillboards will become like all the other advertising media that surrounds one at a gas station, just more garbage.

Movie Theater Advertising

Another venue where people become a literal captive audience is at the movie theater. Where one used to expect hearing some music and seeing previews, most theaters in the past 5 years have begun playing promotional audio, and showing advertising not only during the previews, but from the moment the theater doors open. Bring this up at a party and it seems everyone has a complaint about ads before movies they’ve paid to see. In fact, recently a woman sued a Lowe’s theater for false advertising because the advertised show time and the actual show time differed drastically because of pre-movie advertising.

An AAA Blog reader sent me a post she wrote about pre-movie advertising which goes into some history and includes a great page from Kevin Murphy’s recent book, but I’ll let you see it for yourself. Speaking of fighting back…

Corporate Vandals Not Welcome

I’ve been meaning to write about this for months and I’m a little embarrassed it’s taken this long. Corporate Vandals Not Welcome is a grass roots sticker campaign to go over illegal advertising. Companies attempting to buy legitimacy will pay “street teams” to put up posters, stickers, and other promotional materials illegally. The laws are loosely enforced (if at all) and the marketing firms incorporate fines into their budgets. All the while individual artists and graffiti writers putting up stickers of their own are called criminals, beaten, fined, and given jail sentences. Corporate Vandals Not Welcome’s message is simple and clear, and the stance (“we have declared open season on corporate vandalism”) is refreshing. While I’m sure the owners of the site would prefer to remain anonymous I’m going to assume they won’t mind if people borrow the message for their own campaign. Check out the site and get to it!

photo courtesy: PSFK