You get off an airplane at a somewhat rural airport. The kind with only a few gates. Then you see an advertisement for RFID tracking systems. That would be Radio Frequency Identification for logistics. Something is out of place here?
Then you remember you're in Northwest Arkansas, the land of Wal-Mart. Chances are somebody getting on or off a plane in this area would be interested in that specific type of technology. What looked out of place at first now makes sense.
I ran into the same situation in Washington DC earlier this year. I stepped on the Metro and noticed all the in-car advertising for Boeing's KC-767 Advanced Tanker. I'd never seen a $140 million dollar plane advertised on a subway before. Same thing with the in-station advertising, lots of pictures of planes. Of course most of this in-station advertising was at the Pentagon-area stations.
Same situation as today. Some of the folks riding the DC Metro around the Pentagon might just have a few hundred million for a new plane :-)
Visitor Comments
One of the trippy things back when I lived in DC and started each morning with a paper copy of the Washington Post (ah, the old days) was the number of ads that were clearly aimed at five people in DC - full page ads in the paper about pending legislation or a policy decision that some regulatory committee was facing. When you're in the "Imperial Capital," as one of my friends used to refer to our town, it's definitely a different kind of media environment!
Posted by: John Whiteside | September 7, 2007 7:49 AM
I worked for many years for a TV station that was owned by a DC outfit. The DC flagship station did not at the time have an impressive news product (it has gotten better), but made money hand over fist.
Something about "issue ads" that never played in any other markets. Very lucrative, very expensive, and very targeted. Yet effective.
Posted by: Ike | September 7, 2007 10:52 AM
Those issues ads are especially prevalent on Sunday mornings, during shows like "Meet the Press." I remember when Haliburton was on a tear with them, doing these fluffy pieces on all the stuff they were doing in Iraq, complete with the American flag and patriotic music. You have to give them credit for having balls...
Posted by: Benet | September 8, 2007 1:01 PM