There's No Escape

By Michele Orecklin

Long ago, someone very clever realized that public rest rooms make great places to advertise. What was usually being advertised, unfortunately, was an ex-girlfriend's easy virtue. It took a while, but now better-organized and richly financed marketing campaigns by Snapple and Comedy Central, among others, are capitalizing on the potential of stalls and urinals--numerous flat surfaces, a steady procession of customers and, most important, a consumer sure to be fixed in one place for long minutes with nowhere else to look.

While many may find this development invasive or downright creepy, it's important to see things from the point of view of the advertisers. Not so long ago, they could reach the majority of the North American viewing public by running commercials on the three broadcast TV networks. But with the advent of cable, VCRs, mute buttons and newer technologies like the one used in TiVo, the audience has fractured into hundreds of niches not only able but likely to skip commercials. Advertisers today have to get their butts off the figurative couch and work outside the living room. They have to become hunters adept at tracking the consumer prey. They're investing millions to learn your habits, tastes and routines, when you commute, recreate and flush--and they're using this intelligence to pitch their products at a moment when you can't possibly turn away.

They call this approach captive marketing, and it's flourishing not only in rest rooms but in elevators, stores, movie theaters and taxis. Technology enables companies to reach you where you shop, on the golf course or even on a commuter bus. While you might view a two-minute elevator ride as a rare moment for quiet reflection, advertisers see it as a time when no one else has your attention. When you call your bank to activate your credit card, you get put on hold and pummeled with ads for the bank and its marketing "partners," who know that you know that if you hang up, you lose your place in the telephonic queue. "The base appeal of this trend is that the audience can't opt out," says Dennis Roche, 37, U.S. president of Zoom Media, based in Montreal, which places ads in bathrooms.

Chances are, the number of formerly private places in which you can be targeted will grow. Although it is too early to quantify, captive marketing may benefit from events like the war in the gulf, which prompted many major advertisers to pull ads out of TV shows, newspapers and magazines for fear of being associated with negative images or, if their ads are lighthearted, of seeming insensitive. Some of these advertisers will instead try to reach you in one or more of the following unexpected locations:

ELEVATORS Commercials on flat screens in elevators may prove to be a godsend for those who hate small talk, as well as for advertisers who want to target a specific demographic. By placing ads in selected office buildings, marketers can reach high-earning, highly educated professionals likely to buy their products. Office workers spend an average of six minutes a day--24 hours a year--riding in elevators, usually looking at nothing but their shoes, according to Michael DiFranza, 41, CEO of Captivate Network. Captivate has installed 4,200 flat-screen video monitors in about 400 office buildings in the U.S. and Canada. The screens flash news headlines, weather reports and stock-market updates--and along the bottom, ads from such firms as American Airlines, Mercedes-Benz and UBS Warburg. "We're getting people's attention at a moment in the day when conventional media can't get to them," says DiFranza.

Captivate charges a building owner about $8,000 an elevator to install the screens and collects a $100 monthly service fee on each. Captivate divides the ad dollars with the landlord, who earns revenue from an asset that would otherwise rack up only service costs. Sam Gilliland, 41, CEO of Travelocity, a Captivate client, says elevator placement enables him to send location-specific ads to potential customers in different cities. "This is an opportunity to break through clutter," he says. Unfortunately, Captivate screens offer no audio (so far at least), so elevator music has yet to be vanquished.

REST ROOMS Most politicians who leave public life to try to reap millions in the private sector end up at lobbying firms. Mark Ghermezian went into marketing. Three years ago, when running for senior-class president at his high school in Edmonton, Canada, Ghermezian tacked campaign posters over urinals and discovered that this placement could be quite effective. Now 20 and a part-time student at Yeshiva University in New York City, he runs Flush Media, which places full-color print ads in stalls and above urinals. His primary venues are in Canada at places like Calgary International Airport, but he also has a contract with 130 New York Sports Club locations along the East Coast. So far, clients include TNT and Snapple. Ghermezian says building owners like the ads because they cut down on vandalism by "keeping people occupied." They're also the only way the owners have found to make money off their rest rooms--a comforting thought.

But there is competition for stall space. Ghermezian says Flush plans to offer ads on video screens within the next few years, but Zoom Media is already doing so. Zoom places interactive signs and small billboards above sinks and urinals in men's rooms, and on the backs of stall doors in women's rooms. The ads appear in 35 cities in the U.S., mostly in restaurants and bars where they reach customers in the coveted 18-to-34 age group. When Comedy Central was launching its show Crank Yankers last June, it hired Zoom to place ads in 500 bar rest rooms in four cities. Triggered by infrared motion detectors, the 16-in. by 20-in. posters played a snippet of audio from the show when customers approached. It probably goes without saying that these ads were placed not in women's rooms at the Four Seasons but at bars frequented by the young men the network wanted to attract. "We had a captive audience for a minute or so, and it was one that was so pure to our demographic," says Richard Loomis, 39, vice president of advertising and marketing at Comedy Central.

This ability to micro-target an audience is Zoom's chief selling point. "If an advertiser wants to get its message out to gay Hispanic men, we've got them," says Zoom's Roche, whose firm knows which bars are frequented by those men. "If the advertiser wants sports fans, we know where to get them." He adds that the company does business with a number of pharmaceutical companies that sell some products specifically for men or for women. Rest rooms, he says, are an ideal place to reach men only or women only. It's a shame that Pfizer didn't figure that out before putting Bob Dole on TV in front of God and everybody else to stump for Viagra.

TAXIS AND BUSES As if riding in a New York City taxi isn't stimulating enough, you can now add to your amusement by watching television--assuming you happen to hail one of the yellow cabs participating in a pilot program. The city's Taxi and Limousine Commission has agreed to let seven private companies test their proprietary technology in 400 of the city's 12,000 taxis, with more cabs to be added to the program over the course of the year. On flat screens facing the backseat, the marketing companies offer a mix of traditional commercials, information on restaurants, shopping and movie times, and short documentaries about the city. Corey Gottlieb, 39, CEO of Global Vision Interactive, whose Interactive Taxi monitors are used in the program, reports that advertisers are happy because they can run ads at appropriate times. "It wouldn't make sense," he says, "to run an ad for Bacardi rum during the morning rush."

If a passenger chooses not to engage an Interactive Taxi monitor, it will run loops of advertising, which a rider can mute. But if the rider touches the screen, the ads move to the right while the left side offers ways to get information of every kind from news headlines to hotel listings. In the future, Interactive Taxi hopes to enable consumers to order advertised items by swiping a credit card through a scanner attached to the video screen.

Should you travel by bus, you may also be susceptible to promotional onslaughts. In 20 Trailways Transportation System coaches that run along the Northeast corridor, a company called NRoute Communications has installed TV monitors that descend from overhead compartments. Using wireless technology, the company can beam news, information and ads specific to the region the bus is passing through. "It's a great time to reach people because we're not competing with anything else--not the dog, cat, kids or spouse," says NRoute CEO Carlos Garcia, 36. "You don't have a choice in these vehicles--you are required to sit down." Garcia hopes to expand the service to other bus companies and to Amtrak trains.

And don't think that just because you drive your own car, advertisers won't be able to find you. On 10 billboards, mostly in California, Alaris Media Network, a Sacramento-based company, has installed "smart signs." Although they have the dimensions of traditional billboards, they are electronic and therefore able to change their advertising according to who is driving by. The signs are equipped with sensors that can tap into the radio stations that drivers are listening to as they pass. The company then determines the most popular radio station for certain blocks of time. From the radio stations, Alaris learns the demographics of the stations' listeners, then relays that information to marketers, who can place their ads on the Alaris billboard at the most appropriate hour.

RECREATION SPOTS Major corporations have sponsored sports tournaments and entire sports stadiums. Taking this trend to the micro level, they can now sponsor individual holes on a golf course. ProLink, a company based in Tempe, Ariz., has mounted screens in 21,960 golf carts on 305 public and private courses around the country. Using GPS technology, the screens display static ads for the sponsoring company as a golfer approaches the tee box of a particular hole, as well as distances and tips on how to play the hole. One hopes that a clothing company will soon provide style tips too.

Moviegoers are used to seeing ads as they settle into their seats, but Regal CineMedia, based in Centennial, Colo., has taken things to a new level. It is distributing a 20-minute block of digital video with short films and commercials designed especially for theaters from companies like Coca-Cola and Cingular Wireless. Unlike their ads on TV, these are often mini-narratives with plots that have a beginning, a middle and an end. Regal's parent firm, the largest theater operator in the U.S., hopes to have its preshow on 4,500 screens in 375 theaters by the end of the year.

Not all moviegoers take unsolicited commercials sitting down. Miriam Fisch, 37, of Evanston, Ill., sued Loews Cineplex Entertainment because the film she had paid to see started four minutes late as a result of ads. The high school teacher says the theater committed fraud by posting the film's start time while knowing it would not be accurate. Although it would have made a tidy story to say Fisch had gone to see The Hours, she was in fact at the theater to see The Quiet American. --Reported by Dody Tsiantar/New York

With reporting by Dody Tsiantar/New York