No Escape : Ads Here, There and Everywhere
Shortly before Eastern Air Lines overseas jets land on U.S. soil, flight attendants with transatlantic smiles hand passengers their customs declaration papers. Since December, about 200,000 passengers on these fights have found something odd tucked inside the forms.
Advertisements.
The ads have been placed by such companies as MasterCard, Fuji Film and even Walt Disney World in Florida. Depending on how you look at it--at 20,000 feet above sea level--Madison Avenue is either reaching new highs--or new lows. “We haven’t heard any complaints yet,” said Don Perry, who manages customer service on Eastern’s transatlantic flights. “But that doesn’t mean we won’t.”
Land, Sea and Air
It’s not just Eastern. Twenty-five other airlines have also signed up for the ad service. A few cruise ship lines are interested, too. By land, sea and air, there is no escaping it: Uninvited, unexpected commercials are sprouting everywhere. And they seem to be increasingly unwelcome:
--In New York, a pedestrian armed with a spray-paint can attacked a truck whose daily mission is to cart 10-foot-long billboards up and down the streets of Manhattan. “You can’t please all the people all the time,” said Neil Weed, sales manager of the company that owns the trucks, Prestige Panels Inc.
--In the Miami area, some restaurant customers have ripped restroom advertisements right off the stall doors. “You never know how people will react,” said Gene Murray, president of the Miami-based company that places these ads, Indoor Advertising Inc.
--In the Hollywood Hills, some residents were mighty upset with Fox Broadcasting, which paid the city $27,000 to add its own name above the famous HOLLYWOOD sign for two weeks, converting the landmark into a larger-then-life ad for Fox. “All of a sudden,” said Gladwin Hill, a journalist and director of a homeowners group, “swarms of yahoos are driving up here to see the sign.”
--At Tower Video in Berkeley, one angry customer stormed into the store and demanded his money back when he discovered that a commercial for Diet Pepsi preceded the videotape version of the hit film “Top Gun.” “They weren’t too happy,” said a store clerk.
Double Dose
Three decades ago, one study revealed that the typical American noticed slightly more than 1,500 advertisements each day. Ad industry chiefs estimate the number now may be closer to 3,000.
And the more ads people see, the more ads they tune out. A recent study by the ad firm Ogilvy & Mather showed that 72% of the American public thinks that advertising insults their intelligence. And a study by the research firm R. H. Bruskin Associates revealed that nearly half the American public thinks that advertising produces “very little useful information.”
None of this, however, is putting so much as a dent into Madison Avenue’s penchant for filling just about any empty space with advertising. Its messages are spilling into doctors’ and dentists’ offices, popping out of restaurant menus and surfacing in the home video market.
In Britain, ads have begun to appear on record album jackets. In American supermarkets, ads flop from the front of grocery carts. A specially designed pay telephone booth--filled with ads--is just beginning to make its mark in Southern California. And in Sacramento, there is a proposal before the state Assembly to allow advertising on the 2.5 million orange plastic bags used by state road crews each year to collect litter.
“Maybe we should create advertising-free zones,” says John Mead, West Coast creative director for the ad firm DFS Dorland Worldwide Inc., with a smile.
“Any time there is a gathering of people that an advertiser wants to reach, it will find a way of reaching them,” said John A. Czepiel, associate professor of marketing at New York University’s School of Business. “We may not like it. And we may find it intrusive. But I can guarantee you one thing, this is not something that is going to go away.”
Share Is Rising
Ad industry executives agree. They estimate that up to 10% of $94.7 billion spent annually by all U.S. advertisers is now moving away from conventional media like television, radio and print, and into so-called “alternative” media. That compares to less than 2% just five years ago.
This movement toward offbeat advertising is not happening by accident. One lure is the comparative low cost. But an even bigger issue is at play here--everyone wants attention. In the constant struggle to stand out from the crowd, many ad firms are as concerned about where their ads are placed as what they say.
Until now, there were ways for folks who don’t much care for advertisements to pay the price and basically avoid them. Islands of refuge from commercials could once be found at the movie theaters. And renting home videos used to be a sure-bet way to avoid commercial breaks. But no longer.
Paramount says that the Diet Pepsi commercial on its “Top Gun” video helped slice $3 off the retail price of the tape. And Robert Klingensmith, president of the video division of Paramount Pictures, expects others will soon follow. “I don’t think anyone would be foolish enough to put an ad in the middle of a tape,” he said, “but you never know.”
And beginning next month, people who rent home videos will not be seeing ads just on the tapes--but also on the plastic boxes that rental shops use to protect the cassettes. This comes courtesy of Adcorp Ltd., a company in Calgary, Canada, that has sold ad space on some 20 million video rental cases. “When video stores rent tapes for 99 cents, they just don’t earn enough money,” said Richard Melchin, president of Adcorp. As a way to bring in more income, he said, “Eventually, they’ll all have to consider our ads.”
At the Local Theater
Movie theaters have become big-time commercial outlets, with companies like Screenvision Cinema Network of New York leading the way. It places ads on 5,000 theater screens nationwide for such companies as Eastman Kodak Co., Dr Pepper and Chevrolet. Recent surveys by the company reveal that about 4% of moviegoers disapprove. “Heck,” said Terry Laughren, president of Screenvision, “you’d have trouble getting 96% of an audience to agree that they like their mothers.”
Shoppers, meanwhile, are also the targets of new ad placements. While customers wheel down the aisles at some Eckerd drug stores, the music and ads they hear may not be from radio stations at all, but pre-taped programs subtly filled with ads for in-store products. Last Christmas, for example, MasterCard hit the in-store airwaves at both Eckerd’s and Toys ‘R Us.
Madison Avenue is also devising ways to slip ads into personal computers. One New York company, Einstein Automation Solutions Inc., is marketing a series of so-called “infomercials”--lengthy ads on computer disks--that it has tailor-made for companies. A General Electric plastics division uses the disks to advertise its products to other businesses. “We’re for companies with more complex information then you can fit in a tag line,” said J. G. Sandom, the company’s vice president of marketing.
No Big Surprise
Ad industry chiefs are hardly surprised by all this.
“Clients are sensing that the traditional media forms are less powerful than they used to be,” said Alexander Kroll, president and chief executive of the New York ad giant, Young & Rubicam Inc. “More and more clients feel they have to create their own media.”
Indeed, unconventional media is the ad industry’s “next frontier for creativity,” said Keith L. Reinhard, chairman and chief executive of the New York ad firm DDB Needham Worldwide Inc.
This poses an inviting problem for Jack Jadick, vice president and associate media director at Grey Advertising Inc. in New York. “A few years ago, alternative media forms would not have gotten any consideration from us,” he said. “But now, advertisers are telling us that they don’t always want to fight the noise level of traditional media.”
So, Grey has recently tested offbeat media forms for some clients. It has placed some Mitsubishi ads, for example, atop the lift towers at ski resorts. But there is one stumbling block. When advertisers turn to oddball uses of media, Jadick says, “it’s much harder to measure the results.”
And Now, the Restroom
At times, it can also be embarrassing, said William E. Phillips, chairman of the New York ad firm Ogilvy Group Inc. During a recent out-of-state visit, he was confronted with a framed ad posted in the men’s restroom at a local restaurant. “Everybody wants to put ads wherever they can,” he said, “but there has to be some limits.”
At last count, there were three U.S. companies selling ad space in restrooms. But it is no easy sell. Indoor Advertising Inc. has failed to corral a single major advertiser, although it has landed some smaller customers, says Murray, the president, “The biggest problem of all is finding restaurants that will accept the ads,” he said. Indeed, few restaurants near a Miami retailer of sailboat accessories would accept the ads the company tried to place through Indoor Advertising, said Fortunato Arroyo, owner of Cruising Gear. “I might as well have flushed the money down the toilet.”
The fact is, there really is no substitute for conventional advertising, says Jack Roth, president of Los Angeles-based Admarketing Inc. “You just shouldn’t get involved in the fringe media until you’ve pretty much saturated the basic ones.”
Not all advertisers agree with that. Some advertisers are learning that by turning to offbeat media, they can directly target customers in ways they had never even considered. And they are discovering that there is virtually no limit to the media menu.
Smorgasbord of Ads
Indeed, menus at one popular Los Angeles-area restaurant give customers a smorgasbord of ads. Moustache Cafe, an eatery that attracts Hollywood’s entertainment set, hands each customer a 24-page menu that is half-filled with ads. Fernand Page, the restaurant’s owner, said customers do not seem to mind. “Maybe one in 2,000 complains,” he said.
Lynne Segall is not complaining. She is director of marketing at the Hollywood Reporter, an entertainment industry newspaper that has had a full-page ad in the restaurant’s menu for two years straight. “We know a lot of entertainment-oriented executives eat in that restaurant,” she said. “What better way could we reach them?”
Doctors are the kind of customer that Merrill Lynch & Co. wants to reach. But the investment firm discovered that it is hard to get a doctor’s attention without an appointment. So last spring, Merrill Lynch began talking to doctors where they work--at 1,500 hospitals and medical centers nationwide.
Its ads started appearing in places like doctors lounges, hospital cafeterias and even doctor scrub rooms. Says one ad, “Dislocated assets can be cured.” The ads--placed by Memphis-based Whittle Communications--appear as framed posters in places like Kaiser Memorial Hospital in Los Angeles and Metropolitan Hospital in New York.
Controlled Atmosphere
“We’ve not only isolated our market,” said Chuck Peebler, chief executive of the New York ad firm Bozell, Jacobs, Kenyon & Eckhardt Inc., which represents Merrill Lynch, “but we’re communicating to them in an atmosphere that we can now control.”
Similarly, when Crest toothpaste wants to reach its target market, it goes right to the dentist’s office. Just ask Albert Sukut, a Costa Mesa dentist who recently struck a deal with Crest’s maker, Procter & Gamble Co. Crest now hangs an ad in his waiting room. But in exchange, Procter & Gamble provides waiting room literature and plenty of free Crest samples. “A lot of patients ask about it,” he said, “but I’ve never heard any of them complain.”
Since July, 1985, Crest has been placing these poster-like ads in thousands of dental offices nationwide. “Being right there in the dentist’s office,” said Linda Ulrey, a Procter & Gamble spokeswoman, “can convey an important message to the patient.”
You probably won’t see an ad for Jolt Cola in your dentist’s office. With its high sugar and high caffeine content, Jolt appeals particularly to college students.
And that’s exactly who is now seeing Jolt ads. At a dozen colleges in the Rochester, N.Y., area, they are reaching student TV viewers--144 times a day--on closed-circuit, video TV service in student centers, dormitories and even in dining halls.
Expansion Plans
Jolt is made by a privately held company that has a much smaller national ad budget then competitors like Pepsi or Coke. This monthlong campaign will cost the company about $14,000. By fall, the company behind this advertising--Campus Vision--plans to place its TV screens at 200 universities.
Of course, these monitors must be strategically placed. And this new strategy of offbeat ad placement is even finding its way into--of all places--gas stations. Some are selling ad space atop their gas pumps. And a few have even considered decal-type ads that would be slapped onto gas pump handles.
“There’s only one thing I haven’t figured out,” said the owner of one Long Beach service station. “How to sell ad space on my most popular item--paper towels.”
