There's No Escape

PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION FOR TIME BY VIKTOR KOEN

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.