They Also Sell to Those Who Stand And Wait
When an Iranian airliner was mistakenly shot down July 3, the nation’s media scrambled to get the news out to the American public. Some of the first to be informed, however, were people who glanced up at a nondescript box while waiting in line to buy their Sunday morning coffee and doughnuts at a local convenience store.
“Within three to five minutes, we had that moving nationally,” said Keith Tuber, the editor of Silent Radio. The Chatsworth firm’s Times Square-style, moving-word video displays reel off news bulletins and ads for customers in 5,000 businesses nationwide, constituting what the company calls an “in-store electronic newspaper.”
“What we try to do is to go where the people are in terms of having to wait,” said David Feldman, vice president in charge of marketing.
Yes, at last, that neglected, demoralized product of the crowded urban landscape--the humble citizen waiting in line--is getting fresh respect. This company and others like it in the San Fernando Valley and around the nation are bombarding that frustrated group of consumers with a
new generation of intrusive entertainment and advertising, relying on video shopping carts, rolling billboards and even burger radio. The shopping-rich Valley, where the lines can be even longer than in more urban areas, is proving to be a fertile hunting ground for these new services.
“They make jokes about the Russians standing in line. At least they know they have no freedom,” complained one bitter ad agency employee. “That’s all we do, wait on lines.”
Used to Waiting
“We are a waiting society,” added John M. Kawula, president of the Point of Purchase Advertising Institute in Englewood, N.J.
Merchandisers have become aware of just how much waiting people do, shifting from one foot to the other, concocting murderous plots in which obtuse waiters, theater cashiers and parking lot attendants figure prominently.
“These people are the perfect captive audience because they have no place to go,” said Jack Liebowitz, marketing manager of Rollavision, a Woodland Hills company whose 4-by-5-foot illuminated, still-life ad displays are showing up at checkout lines in Vons, Ralphs and other supermarkets. Company research shows that people in the Los Angeles area spend an average of six to 12 minutes in line at grocery stores and that in the Valley, the wait can be as long as 24 minutes.
Rollavision started operating three years ago, and is adding 200 to 300 locations a month, says company President Stephen Regen. The McDonald’s fast-food chain advertises its products on screens installed on the grounds near drive-through windows. Liebowitz said sales have jumped from 4% to 6% in test stores, though McDonald’s refused to comment on sales performance.
Rollavision, which pays supermarkets for the right to place its screens in their stores, charges advertisers up to $1,600 a year to put their names and images on the screens.
Menu Suggestions
And Wendy’s Old Fashioned Hamburgers has begun testing a service in which drive-through customers can tune in a radio broadcast that carries menu suggestions and promotions. Customers get a 10% discount for saying “best burgers in the business.”
“Not too many are saying it,” said Denny Lynch, vice president for communications. He said he is not sure how many customers are tuning in.
But wait-time media have other purposes besides filling a customer’s mind with ads, news and Madison Avenue slogans. Feldman promotes his service with research that he says shows customers are less aggressive and irritable when they reach the front of a line after being caressed by the soothing electronic embrace of Silent Radio.
“I don’t hear any complaints about our lines” from customers, said Joel Simons, assistant vice president for the Chatsworth Industrial Branch of Bank of America. “As they move along, it occupies their minds.”
Although some technologies being used are brand new, canny salesmen have tried for thousands of years to catch the eyes of consumers hanging around the marketplace. “It goes back to the Roman Empire, to the signs by the goats reading ‘goat milk,’ ” Kawula said.
Advances in technology are suddenly heating up the store wars, as advertisers and shopkeepers alike find adventurous ways to grab the attention of potential buyers. Ads are appearing in washrooms, in telephone booths and on parking meters.
Jack Sullivan, media supervisor for Leo Burnett Co. in Chicago, said companies are “doing better at trying to get at” the consumers. “They’re coming up with better ideas.”
But does this kind of manipulation work? Or does it simply antagonize? “This is audio pollution,” said Zoe Walrond, who complained about promotional tapes played inside a Thrifty Jr. store in Northridge. The tapes feature soft rock music and commercial messages.
“I thought to myself, ‘This is on purpose. They want me to stand in line so I have to listen to this.’ I really resent it.”
Richard Hosker, store manager of the Thrifty Jr., said, “The lines do get long,” but he believed the tapes “help to pass the time.”
David Stewart, a professor of marketing at USC, said finding eye-catching ways to remind customers of products they need while they are in the store may be successful. But he expressed skepticism about technologies that simply drop advertisements on a queue of bored customers like a shower of confetti at a dull party.
Broad measurements of the effectiveness of the new strategies are difficult to obtain, since they are so new. But John Miller, vice president for communication services at Young & Rubicam, the largest ad agency in the nation, said “in-store media is the hottest topic in the business.”
Silent Radio began in 1983, and while the service grew slowly at first--there were only 300 units in use at the beginning of 1986--it has recently taken off. By the end of this year there will be 2,100 of the 7-inch-high by 3-feet-wide units in Southern California alone. The service is in 23 cities nationwide, said Feldman.
Keeping It Short
Tuber, a former journalist, manages the news side of the business, which operates 17 hours a day and employs nine editors. “It’s more intense than a newspaper,” he said. A major event such as the downing of the Iranian plane keeps his crew jumping all day long, pumping out succinct updates that make Associated Press writers seem verbose. Silent Radio stories are no longer than 289 characters.
Asked how a dense story could be told in such few words, Tuber emphasized that “it can be done.” For example, the writers had enough space to produce daily episodes of a staff-created soap opera called “Dawn of Tomorrow,” about the racy goings-on at a radio station in Northern California. It was so popular that bars complained when the feature was dropped.
Sullivan says his firm has placed ads on Silent Radio screens in bars and in hotels. “I think advertisers are realizing that they’ve got a captive audience that is not doing anything but sitting there,” he said.
Businesses buying Silent Radio may pay for the right to put only their ads on the screen, which costs $100 a month. For a lesser fee, the business buys whatever programming Silent Radio decides to provide.
Some people feel this type of media is tied in to the growing trend toward so-called point of purchase advertising, in which companies try to get the consumer’s attention in the marketplace, instead of being content to talk to them via glitzy, expensive televised ads.
“Eighty percent of buying decisions are made at the point of purchase,” Miller said.
Cart Screen
One futuristic gimmick in this new arena is the VideOcart. Its screen tells customers when their number is up at the deli counter, announces sales and plays video games with them while they wait in the checkout line.
The cart is the brainchild of entrepreneur John Malec, the appointed shopper in his family. “The kinds of frustration of waiting in line is what made the idea pop into his head,” said Forrest Anderson, director of marketing communications for Information Resources of Chicago.
The cart is about to be tested in Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta supermarkets.
Not all ideas are hits, however. The El Torito restaurant chain last year inaugurated a service called ETV, which televises music videos for bar patrons waiting to be seated for dinner. Spliced between the bouncy videos for bands such as Fleetwood Mac are slick ads for fajitas and other house specialties.
Though the chain’s Thousand Oaks restaurant is airing it, “we’re not sure it produced anything tangible,” said a spokesman for the Restaurant Enterprises Group, El Torito’s parent company. So ETV is “defunct for the time being.”
People also are forced to wait in line on Southern California’s jammed freeways. The time Southern Californians spend in traffic has made radio king here.
“I think it is probably one of the key points in explaining why this is the No. 1 radio market in the country,” said Gordon Mason, executive director of the Southern California Broadcasters Assn. “New York has half again the population we’ve got, and they’ve got eight to 10 more stations. Yet we’ve got them by $10 million to $12 million a year” in added revenue.
Radio Sales Up
Total ad sales for radio were $146 million in 1981, but ballooned to $276 million last year.
“A lot of this is because here is one way to get to those people stuck in traffic,” Mason said.
Even the lowest of the low-tech advertising formats, the humble billboard, might spruce up its image to appeal to modern, traffic-bound travelers. Amy Van Court, market support coordinator for Patrick Media Group in Los Angeles, the nation’s biggest outdoor advertising firm with 55,000 displays, said her firm has considered talking boards.
The concept is similar to burger radio. Drivers can tune in a billboard on the radio while driving by and get a recorded message about the product being displayed. “It fell through,” said Van Court of the company’s initial involvement in the concept. “So many of our displays are on freeways, where people go by so fast. We did not think they would be effective.”
But noting that the speed of freeway travelers may soon slow to a crawl, she said the company has not “closed the door on it.”
