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The advertising industry has always been one for latching on to the

latest trends and the current flavour of the month is ambient media.

In a world where consumers are exposed to hundreds of commercial

messages every day, advertisers are looking to evermore esoteric spaces

to ram home a brand’s credentials.

As the public becomes all too familiar with the standard advertising

slots - TV, radio, billboards - marketers are having to turn to more

unusual environments to catch unsuspecting consumers.

But while crazy examples of ambient media are being orchestrated - from

Becks-drinking aliens leaving branded crop circles to unsuspecting cows

being hijacked as roving, grass-eating poster sites - there are many

more everyday examples that illustrate the sector’s real popularity.

Compared with other advertising forms, ambient is cheap and easy to

do.

It offers relatively high impact at a low cost, which is why marketers

are turning to it in droves. But there is a danger that it could reach

saturation point and end up turning people off. Indeed, there is a

section of society now clearly defined as ’ad-avoiders’, who actively

try to shun advertising because they feel it is too intrusive.

With this in mind, we decided to go out and see to what extent ambient

media is changing the face of advertising; has it really reached

saturation point, or are there still many opportunities to be

exploited?

Jane Bainbridge goes hunting in central London

I started the great ambient media hunt at King’s Cross, rubbing

shoulders with an interesting mix of commuters and winos.

King’s Cross is an excellent example of a location where advertisers

have thought hard about the environment they’re appearing in and created

the ads accordingly. Maiden’s Channel 4 poster site includes an

light-emitting diode (LED) screen so those travellers milling about on

the concourse can see what they should be tuning into for their night’s

viewing - or alternately, and rather irritatingly, those whose trains

are delayed know exactly what they’re missing. The text is regularly

updated and the alterations succeed in drawing your attention to the

ads.

Halifax’s ad for its 24-hour banking was cleverly situated right next to

the clock and arrivals screen, using the line ’You can catch us

anytime’.

But possibly the most unusual spot of branding in the station was by

Morse, the computer distributor and service group, which rolled up on

blank slots on the timetable. There’s no doubt passengers would see the

ads as they scan for the 17.30 to Leeds but I didn’t think the creative

was that great; certainly a Yellow Pages execution of a similar type at

Waterloo Station is much more powerful.

Morse is doubtlessly targeting the first-class business traveller and

commuter rather than the rucksack-lugging student but I’m not convinced

that the medium is necessarily the best for that audience.

From the overground hubbub, I went down into the tube station. One of

the most creative bits of ambient media currently going on London

Underground has to be the Nicotinell ads directly under the no-smoking

signs that cover the tube.

Steps in the right direction

Underground stations are perfect targets for ambient media moguls. In

particular they are being exploited by clients keen to signpost their

businesses nearby. McDonald’s has done this to good effect in the West

End where often the steps are covered by ads targeting hungry passengers

as they leave the stations. The strip ads include direction arrows

leaving no room for uncertainty as to which way to head for your Big Mac

fix.

But the prize for tube station branding goes to TDI and Capital Radio

for their colonisation of Leicester Square. From posters and backdrops

to floor tiling and column bumpers, there is no avoiding Capital Radio’s

association with Leicester Square. I would defy anyone to travel

regularly through that station and not be familiar with the commercial

radio station’s brand and wavelength. The floor tiling is particularly

impressive as it complements the circular design of the station.

Carriage returns

While some advertisers have gone for painting trains in their entirety

others have opted for internal ads. On my particular journey I missed

the Yellow Pages train trundling around the Circle Line, although the

United Airline’s Piccadilly line tube did pass by on its way out west to

Heathrow Airport.

However, Vaseline Intensive Care and TDI have gone for the internal

approach.

With all the ad slots dedicated to its deodorant, and all the hanging

straps in the carriage carrying Vaseline branding, there is no escaping

the product. Perhaps the only thing missing is its aroma being pumped

into the carriage. There’s something particularly appropriate about

using this medium given the close quarters at which you can find

yourself with a total stranger in a hot, airless environment.

While the majority of London commuters may well use the subterranean

route to get to work, there are still plenty choosing the above ground

option and advertisers are expanding in this area, too. Not content with

strip ads on the side of buses, there is a growing number of the newer

buses having their entire backs plastered with a complete ad. It’s a far

more impactful way of advertising on buses and the creative seems to be

getting better.

Virgin, Fred Perry and London Dungeon were just a few of the ads I saw

adorning the back of buses scooting round Trafalgar Square. But possibly

the cleverest of all the ambient media choices I found was the bus

ticket with ads on the back. In this particular case it was for Radion

soap powder and was impregnated with the scent of the product. The

scented tickets held the smell well - perhaps a little too well because

it ended up making me rather nauseous.

Advertisers have clearly gone for any potential space on little bits of

paper as a cheap and viable means of pushing their message. Tube tickets

are also carrying ads but on my exploration it was the cab receipts that

were the heavily branded ones. While it may be a cheap way of

advertising, I’m not convinced that your taxi receipt is something you

look at for more than a few seconds as you fill out your expenses - but

then maybe they consider that long enough.

Cab drives

One of the most visually impressive forms of ambient media are the cab

liveries. London’s traditional black cabs are slowly but surely turning

into a technicolour travelling sensation. While being visually very

stimulating it can have its downside. The particular cab I hailed was

done out in Danone’s branding, all centred on its World Cup sponsorship

of France 98 which had finished more than a month earlier.

The final element of my trip involved frequenting a few coffee bars and

pubs. In one bar in Soho the whole place was heavily Barcardi branded

and a special unit full of Barcardi postcards was strategically placed

above the pay phone by Carl Pickford Advertising. But rather sadly,

perhaps the first ever example of ambient media seems to be dying out.

Despite extensive searching through the pubs of central London, in not

one could I find any branded beer mats - or any beer mats at all for

that matter.

I don’t know if it was just that they don’t put them out in day light

hours or if they are instead heading for the provinces, but I shall miss

that ritual of slowly ripping up endless beer mats over a pint of

Tetley’s.

In conclusion, ambient media is clearly out there and in your face, but

there’s no doubt that there are still lots of opportunities for

advertisers.

The danger is though, that as it becomes more commonplace it is losing

its impact.

While the best aspects of ambient media show real creative flair I am

not convinced that some of the executions will remain effective if there

is an advertising overload. It is the cheek of ambient advertising that

is part of its appeal, but if it starts to overpower the consumer it

will lose its edge.

James Curtis heads out west

Opting for the comfort of the car, I hit the road for my ambient media

hunt, heading west out of London via Hammersmith to the A40. Apart from

the obvious ’big back’ buses and branded taxis, I didn’t feel at all

bombarded by ambient media - in fact it was frustratingly sparse.

One place where it literally isn’t thin on the ground is at Safeway’s in

Hammersmith, where a series of floor tiles, created by Triangle guide

shoppers toward brands on the shelves. Ads for Nescafe, Hellmann’s

Mayonnaise and Snickers Ice cream are all splashed on the floor, as well

as information about Safeway’s ABC loyalty scheme. The Safeway customer

services manager at Hammersmith was clearly very pleased with the tiles

and took me on a guided tour of each one.

Forecourt attendance

Stopping at a Total petrol station to fill up, I came across the

ubiquitous ’nozzle ads’ - on this occasion featuring Red Bull, the

energy drink, and created by Alvern Norway. Compared with some

forecourts, ambient was fairly low-key at this one. I was disappointed

not to be entertained by the petrol station ’radio’ that is increasingly

being piped to motorists - consisting of short bursts of music to fill

the gaps between commercials, or, even better, just ads with no music at

all.

Heading west on the A40 brought me to West London’s very own slice of

Americana - a ’leisure village’ containing a Warner cinema, a disco,

restaurants and the obligatory sports bar. Surely jam-packed with

ambient media? Well no. The sports bar stuck to the beer-mat ban imposed

by central London drinking holes and I was told it also didn’t have any

of ’those funny ads in the toilets’ - known to ambient devotees as

’washroom advertising’.

The Warner cinema is full of 3-D creations advertising forthcoming

attractions, but is this ambient media? In a snap decision entirely

suiting the purposes of this article, I decided it was. But it did make

me wonder why the distributors don’t take their cardboard sculptures out

of the cinemas (at which point people have already decided to see a

film) and put them in some more imaginative locations. Railway

concourses perhaps, or shopping centres.

Interactive kiosks are another form of ambient media which could find

wider applications. Next door to the A40 leisure village is one of

Korean car manufacturer Daewoo’s flagship showrooms. Unlike most

showrooms where you get lynched by commission-hungry salesmen as soon as

you so much as look through the window of a car, you can browse Daewoos

unmolested. Alternatively, you can use interactive kiosks in the

showroom to choose the colour, specification and finance of your new

car.

All this begs the question of why these kiosks have to be limited to car

showrooms. Why not put them in truly ’ambient’ surroundings and see how

many cars are sold? Arguably, the internet already performs this

function, but it may be that the kiosks could attract more online sales.

For now, Daewoo says it has no plans to expand the concept beyond

showrooms.

Parking spaces

This is not to say that Daewoo is unadventurous when it comes to putting

its media in unusual places. Just up the road from the showroom is one

of the capital’s more striking examples of the ambient art - two Daewoo

cars perched on the roof of the Vanguard removal and storage

building.

This deal was struck to help Daewoo in the run-up to the August

registrations and the cars will be coming down shortly to be replaced by

Vanguard’s own ambient ads - old military jets and helicopters which it

’borrows’ from Duxford air museum.

Returning to the office, my faith in ambient was restored. Ever in touch

with all things alternative, Sony PlayStation had chalked its logo all

over Hammersmith’s pavements. Bringing a whole new meaning to the

concept of the ’word on the street’, the stunt was presumably a teaser

in the run-up to last week’s ECTS Computer Entertainment Fair at

Olympia.

This reminded me that ambient media works best when it genuinely

surprises you - when it grabs your attention without unnecessarily

jarring with its environment. As Robert Thurner, marketing manager of

TDI puts it, it aims to ’ambush the consumer and endear them to the

brand in the process’.

I didn’t see enough of that in one afternoon to convince me that we have

seen the best of the sector so far.

THE FASTEST-GROWING MEDIA SECTOR?

New research by Concord and Posterlink says that ambient media has

outgrown all other media sectors in the past three years, with spend in

1995 of pounds 10m set to reach pounds 58m this year.

Defined by Concord as the ’rapidly expanding sector of non-standard

out-of-home media opportunities that surround us’, ambient has evolved

as a quirky offshoot of outdoor into a medium in its own right. In 1995

its share of total outdoor spend was 3%, but this year it is forecast to

reach 12%.

Concord splits ambient into seven categories: retail, leisure, travel,

academic, community, corporate and other. By far the biggest in terms of

spend is retail, with a value of pounds 24.4m. This incorporates

shopping centres, car parks, supermarkets, petrol stations and all other

shop types.

It is the domain of floor tiles, petrol pump nozzles and trolley

ads.

Guy Beresiner, sales manager at Alvern Norway, admits that some forms of

ambient advertising are little more than PR stunts and thinks this

doesn’t help the image of the medium as a serious form of media

buying.

Alvern Norway specialises in petrol pump nozzles and Beresiner says this

is a useful medium for advertisers to tap into an audience which it

knows is about to go into a shop. ’We translate the advertising message

from TV onto the nozzles. It’s a time when people can’t switch over or

walk away and you know your audience is about to walk into a shop.’

Next in the spend stakes is leisure (cinemas, sports stadia, pubs,

clubs, restaurants etc) with pounds 14.6m, and travel (public transport,

bus stops, service stations) with pounds 9m. The remaining pounds 10m is

shared between mobile media (taxis, airships etc) community (park

playgrounds, police and fire departments) and corporate (council offices

and conference centres).

Concord also breaks ambient down into the main media ’types’ - the

biggest being posters in unconventional outdoor locations (washrooms,

telephone boxes etc) which notch up pounds 20.6m. A long way behind are

distributive media, taking in beers mats (where are they?), coupon

dispensers, book marks etc with pounds 6.6m.

Despite our lack of success in finding beer mats, Rob Sutton, sales

director at Hi-Tech Solutions says they are a growing area. ’West End

style bars don’t tend to use them but over 60,000 pubs, clubs and bars

do. The growth is very much there.’

He says advertisers are turning to washroom posters because they are

such good value for money. ’It’s very targeted and highly cost

effective.

A poster panel for a month is only pounds 29. For pounds 25,000 you can

have national coverage in 1200 nightclubs.

Future prospects in this sector look good, according to Concord, for a

variety of reasons. These can be summarised as:

- increased public sector funding of private sector services will expand

sponsorship opportunities - for example the fire service and

coastguard.

- ambient is gaining more credibility with the advertising community,

prompting more investment

- ambient is becoming more prominent across the marketing mix eg

branding, sales promotion, direct marketing and event marketing

- increasing involvement of the established outdoor contractors, such as

Mills & Allen, Maiden, Taxi Media and TDI, will lead to more competition

and innovation in the sector. TDI, for example, is exploring

non-transport related opportunities and possible expansion overseas.

Francis Goodwin, managing director of Maiden Outdoor, admits that there

is some convergence of larger outdoor companies into ambient, but says

his interest only lies in areas where there is ’real long-term

potential’.

Concord notes that the ambient industry needs cohesion, research and

accountability to boost its credibility.