Buy Or Don’t Buy

Good news! Free entertainment is coming to a public transportation hub near you!

(look how boring… blech!)

This advertising craze will start on the 42nd Street-Times Square shuttle line and will be outside of the car and it will look like a 15 minute (really choppy but animated) advertisement. Clearly, New York is taking a tip from Los Angeles’ transportation. Take a look, it’s totally worth it! And that’s just the beginning for New Yorkers.

Our commuter eyes will soon get to feast on much much more visual substance!

The tunnel advertising is part of an ambitious Metropolitan Transportation Authority plan to convert much of its real estate into advertising space. In addition to the tunnel ads, it will sell space on turnstiles, digital screens inside stations, projections against subway station walls, and panels on the outside of subway cars. (NYTs)

So maybe you aren’t into it. At first thought neither was I. I’m tired of all the “clutter” that the advertisers break through using more “clutter” which adds “clutter” to “clutter”. But then it occurred to me, what ads are we going to be forced to watch and look at?

The History Channel, which started to advertise on subway panels this month, wanted to get “buzz not only with viewers and consumers of our content, but buzz within the advertising community and buzz with key business partner influentials in this market,” said Chris Moseley, senior vice president for marketing at the channel.

The History Channel! The HISTORY CHANNEL! It’s one of those channels (like Discovery, or Lifetime) that I wish I had more time to watch and learn. It’s fantastic! They have a miniseries/minisite called Dinosaur Fight Club. I love dinosaurs, and I’d love to be able to enter into a turnstile that looks like a dinosaur’s mouth every minute of every day! (Yes, that idea is free, MTA/History Channel)

All anyone has to do to get on board with this change is to think of it this way: $2 metro fee is just a cheap way to watch 15 minute motion pictures and enter into an amusement park/playground of colorful reading materials.

(image sources: RM116, Geekologie)