Ontario Empoblog

Target Your Demographic
This is addressed to the men who are reading this blog (for reasons that will become clear shortly).

There are advertisers who want to advertise to you, and to make sure that they aren't wasting their advertising dollars on women. In the past, advertisers could just associate their ads with sporting events, but the Zany Sports Lady and Stephanie prove that there are female sports fans out there.

Well, advertisers can move - and have moved - into the men's restroom. VisionBurst is one of the least controversial practitioners of this advertising form. They concentrate in Florida, but similar firms are doing business out here.

Indoor Media is one of the most popular forms of Captive Audience Marketing.

Full-color poster ads are displayed in attractive frames in restrooms, elevators, and other areas of popular nightclubs, restaurants, health clubs, arenas, office buildings, hotels, department stores, shopping malls, theaters, gas stations, and day care centers across South Florida.

Benefits of Indoor Media:

Captures consumer attention for 1-6 minutes.
Display for a captive audience: No channels to change... No pages to turn!
Target your exact market by demographics, gender, and shopping habits.
Waste no money advertising to the wrong consumers.

But if you really want to cater to a target audience (you may groan now), turn to Swisher. Tiny Pineapple discussed Swisher's advertising tactics back in 2002:

It started as corporate self-promotion. Those little plastic screens that you find in the bottom of urinals used to simply say:

Sanitized by Swisher

…but it soon evolved into lifestyle advice:

Sanitized by Swisher
Say No To Drugs

I’m sure that there were quite a few heroin addicts who were persuaded to reform after being lectured by a bathroom fixture, but I resent the rather sexist implication that urinal users are the only ones in need of drug-free advice. I hope that the tampon dispensers in the Ladies’ room carry the same words of wisdom.

Then they decided that you would take investment advice from a urinal:

Sanitized by Swisher
A Publicly Traded Company

After hearing his colleagues brag about their portfolios all afternoon, Mr. Robertson excused himself from the table and strode toward the bathroom. “I need a new investment strategy,” he muttered under his breath. “I have an impeccably balanced portfolio with asset allocations in line with my personal goals and retirement time line, but something seems to be missing. Hmm… Perhaps the world’s leading restroom hygiene service provider holds the key to my financial future....

But Swisher wasn't really getting the message across effectively enough. Urinal.net (don't ask) documents the addition of audio into the advertising equation:

FIRST–EVER INTERACTIVE URINAL COMMUNICATOR TARGETS MEN: "DON’T MISS ‘OUTLAWS’ ON CMT"

NASHVILLE – October 6, 2004 – “Target marketing” has taken on a whole new meaning in the first-ever viral marketing use of an “interactive urinal communicator” in America.

To help create buzz for its new landmark television event, CMT OUTLAWS concert and countdown specials premiering Friday, Oct. 29, CMT will target men at bathroom urinals in bars, concert venues, colleges and radio stations with the – Wizmark® – the world’s first and only device of its kind. The deodorizing urinal drain filter cover – featuring a waterproof anti-glare lenticular viewing display, pre-recorded audio and flashing lights – is motion-activated: step up to the urinal and the unit starts flashing, talking and alternating pictures. The units are designed to last more than 10,000 flushes.

“We’re always looking for innovative ways of reaching viewers, in this case the male audience,” says James Hitchcock, Vice President, Creative and Marketing, CMT. “The new interactive urinal communicator from Wizmark enables CMT to target a very captive and vulnerable audience with our humorous pre-recorded message – recorded by a woman – that commands, ‘Don’t miss OUTLAWS on CMT. You seem to miss everything else!’”

“The social protocols of the use of a urinal – the unwritten rule not to look left or right – guarantees undivided and undistracted visual attention along with the concurrent audio delivery of the ‘Don’t miss OUTLAWS on CMT’ tune-in message,” says Hitchcock. “This new marketing tool is unexpected, unapologetic and good humored.”

CMT’s new original specials being promoted by the Wizmark focus on country greats who make their music and live their lives according to their own rules. CMT GREATEST OUTLAWS: THE DIRTY DOZEN, a countdown of country’s original rule breakers, premieres Friday, Oct. 29 at 8:00-9:00 PM, ET/PT.

Country Music Television (CMT) is an MTV network