Upstarts: Nontraditional Ads

And for plenty of others as well, DiFranza crows, thanks to an almost scary ability to microtarget a building's tenants. "If you're a BMW dealer, and you want to target only buildings with investment bankers in them, on bonus day, I can do that," he says.

A new network of stations
Microtargeting of consumers is a touted advantage of a new form of advertising aimed at drivers in 48 of the 50 states. Except in Oregon and New Jersey, where laws forbid it, most motorists these days pump their own gasoline and daydream while they do so -- a reality not lost on a growing number of companies eager to fill the downtime of those filling up. One such start-up, Alvern Inc., in Houston, sells what it calls FillBoards, roughly three-by-five-inch ads that fit inside a special frame on the pump nozzle.

Perhaps even more ambitious is the Pump Radio Network now being assembled by Advanced Information Systems LLC, in Midland, Mich. The company's patented battery-operated Fueling Talker attaches to gas station pump nozzles and airs four 20-second and two 10-second ads while the premium unleaded flows. From a lone test station in 1997, the company expanded throughout Michigan to 50 locations in 1998 and 150 last year, when ad sales surpassed $1 million. This year the company plans to speed a national rollout by selling franchises.

Advanced Information Systems gives participating gas stations the first and last spots free for their own marketing message -- a powerful tool, according to CEO Mark McKinley, for coaxing consumers into a station minimart. Picture the growing number of credit card-activated pumps, which obviate the formerly obligatory trip to pay the cashier, and McKinley's sales wedge becomes clear. "We've documented a 245% increase in bread sales at a convenience store in Saginaw and a 300% increase in cappuccino sales at a Shell station in Midland," he says.

And what works for the minimart, McKinley maintains, can also work for, say, a local dry cleaner, which can use the Fueling Talker to air neighborhood advertising at a small fraction of the cost of a citywide radio spot. "We saw a 40% increase in dinners Tuesday night at a restaurant called Shooters after we ran their ad offering special kids' meals," says McKinley. And the focused station-by-station demographics that his network provides enable a company like Procter & Gamble to strategically push its premium Millstone coffee at one gas station while banging the drum for Folgers across town.

Your Message Here

Sure, the marketers among us are always looking for new and unusual ways to reach consumers. But isn't it kind of scary? Interactive ads in bathroom stalls? Marketing messages while you pump your gas? Promotional plugs on the very food you eat? Is there no escape? Well, there's probably no cause for great alarm, at least for now. Ambient ads have a long way to go before they give billboards and bus shelters a run for their money.

1998 Estimated Out-of-Home Ad Revenues by Media Type

*Includes ambient advertising.
Source: Outdoor Services Inc., New York City.

Do Ambient Ads Add Up?

Fred Bertino, president and chief creative officer of Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos Inc., a Boston-based advertising agency, recently spoke with contributing writer John Grossmann about the proliferation of ambient ads.

Inc.: What's driving the surge in nontraditional advertising?

Bertino: Clearly, it's harder and harder to break through to reach people, but I also think that the location where your brand shows up says something about it. If you want to introduce a new brand, you don't necessarily want to show up on an old traditional medium.

Inc.: Is this stuff gimmickry or genius?

Bertino: Both. I think by year's end, maybe sooner, we'll start to see which are the hits and which are the misses. The problem is measuring results. There are no cost guidelines, no rate cards yet. Everything's still kind of negotiable.

Inc.: Is this a supplement to or a replacement for traditional advertising?

Bertino: A supplement. The smartest brand-building campaigns express one core idea across as many points of customer contact as possible. People are always looking for new ways to get across their messages, and they're willing to try new things. But I think the fact that all the dot-com companies are reaching to television first says a lot.

Ad Nauseam?

If the new ad companies have their way, you won't be able to escape the onslaught of marketing messages. A sampling of the latest ad locations: