TO: Moscow City Council
FROM: The Red Bull marketing team
Comrades,
During a recent visit to Moscow, we were entranced by Red Square: The views of St. Basil’s Cathedral and the Kremlin were magnificent, while Lenin’s Tomb evoked a palpable sense of history. We also marvelled at the thought of Russian military might that occurred here before the fall of communism.
Then, we started thinking: At roughly 60,000 square metres, maintaining this magnificent space must be tremendously expensive-particularly with Moscow’s annual tourist traffic expected to reach five million within the next two years.
We believe we have come up with a solution that will provide the necessary funds for the upkeep of this world-famous landmark, while providing us with one-of-a-kind marketing exposure. Our proposition entails changing (well, more of a minor tweaking really) the name Red Square to Red Bull Square. After all, Russia is synonymous with vodka, and vodka and Red Bull is a well-documented favourite of the youth market we’re so keen to reach. The new name will be augmented by some tasteful on-site signage and occasional staging of extreme sports events sponsored by Red Bull.
We look forward to becoming close comrades in the months and years ahead.
Sincerely,
The Red Bull Marketing Team
What a preposterous idea, right? After all, what municipality would even consider selling naming rights to such a revered public space?
Step right up, Toronto.
Last November, Toronto city council was discussing the $40-million price tag of renovating Nathan Phillips Square, which was looking decidedly shabby as it marked its 40th birthday. Councillor Doug Holyday suggested the city could underwrite the cost by selling naming rights to the public space to a corporate sponsor. “What if it was the Toronto Dominion Bank Square or the Royal Bank Square or the General Motors Square?” Holyday mused. The ensuing public and media outcry over renaming the square- named in honour of the former “mayor of all the people”-led Holyday to back off his suggestion. But the episode provided an interesting insight into how Toronto- indeed, municipalities across the continent-views the public space.
The word “public” has a plethora of definitions in the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, none of which include the words “advertising” or “corporation.” That raises the question: What claim do marketers have on the public space? While outdoor advertising and naming rights are completely legal (with some exceptions), do advertisers have an ethical obligation to weigh the public’s interest against their own?
“We’re only tenants of the space- nothing more than that,” says Jacques Parisien, president of Astral Media Outdoor. “I think there’s room for advertising in the public space, but not everywhere and not at any frequency. You have to respect the neighbourhood, the piece of furniture; I’m not sure garbage bins should carry advertising, I’m not sure public benches should carry advertising.”
While the public frequently bemoans the amount of advertising on TV and radio, in both cases there’s a tacit agreement between the viewer/listener and advertiser: You get to watch Desperate Housewives or hear Madonna’s latest hit single in exchange for watching or listening to their commercial. There’s no such agreement in out-of-home advertising. Motorists and pedestrians are forced to acknowledge oversize wall murals, sidewalk drawings (such as the ones for Absolut Vodka that appear to burst out of the sidewalks around high-traffic areas in Toronto), wild postings or video boards pushing the latest perfume or soft drink. In a typical big-city bar or restaurant, the washroom has become a major ad medium. Same goes for cultural events, whether as high-brow as a gallery show or as down-market as a monster truck show.
Out-of-home companies like to boast that consumers’ inability to ignore their ads is what gives their medium its power, but as outdoor advertising becomes more invasive and pervasive, who’s looking out for the public’s interests?
Watchdog organizations such as the Toronto Public Space Committee (TPSC) portray Toronto as a city for sale to the highest bidder. They say its streetscape is cluttered with an unsightly mishmash of “amenities” like transit shelters, garbage cans and information kiosks that place advertisers’ interests ahead of the public’s.
There are an estimated 21,000 pieces of this “street furniture”-supplied by at least six or seven companies including CBS Outdoor Canada (transit shelters), Astral (information kiosks) and Eucan (garbage cans)-scattered throughout the city. That’s in addition to roughly 5,000 billboards, plus wall murals-some of them illegal-video boards, wild postings, sidewalk ads and ad-emblazoned vehicles like taxis, buses, streetcars and bicycles. “It’s a mess,” says Astral’s Parisien bluntly. “It’s all different in terms of style, graphics, colour.”
“It’s not so much the private advertisers we have a concern with, but the fact the city has taken such a light stance on everything-they’re not strong enough guardians of the public space,” says Ron Nurwisah, a coordinator with the TPSC and a member of the non-profit group’s Billboard Battalion. “A lot of councillors turn a blind eye to advertising and think it’s alright because I guess they worry about upsetting the business interests in their ward.”
Not surprisingly, it’s an issue that has cropped up in municipalities throughout Canada and worldwide:
• Last month, public outcry and condemnation by both the national and international media forced the city of Saint Albert, Alta. to back away from a plan to sell the naming rights to two hockey rinks bearing the name of former NHLers Troy Murray and Mark Messier. The city had floated the idea of selling the rights to Mark Messier Arena for $200,000, while rights to the Troy Murray Arena were available for $125,000.
• In New York, city council is cracking down on illegal outdoor ads, estimated to be a US$25 million a year business. According to Advertising Age, it’s an industry in which “almost every outdoor company and major consumer marketer has dabbled at some point.” The crackdown is focused on outdoor ads appearing on everything from sheds to residential buildings without the required permits.
• In the 2004 Media Innovation Awards-Marketing‘s annual awards show honouring the best in media creativity-Cossette Media’s Montreal office won a gold in the place-based media/special events category for its “21KMtl” execution for Nike. The campaign’s centrepiece, the subject of sometimes heated debate among the MIA judges, was an initiative which flouted the city of Montreal’s rules against advertising in parks. Cossette and its media partners used unmarked vans to surreptitiously erect lawn signs promoting the event along trails frequented by avid runners, installing the signs on Friday evening and removing them on Sunday evening in order to avoid being detected by city officials.
• In Charlotte, N.C., outdoor ad companies including Adams Outdoor and Lamar have been waging a lengthy battle against a sign ordinance adopted in 1987 that bans new billboards except in areas zoned industrial and along U.S. highways such as Interstates; limits size and spacing; and forbids flashing signs. The latest push comes from Adams, which is urging the city to allow oversize wall murals, or “wallscapes.”
• In Argentina, the 220-foot high Obelisk of Buenos Aires-one of the city’s primary venues for cultural activities-was covered with a giant condom to create awareness of 2005 World AIDS day.
Speaking at the International Advertising Festival in Cannes earlier this year, Daniela Krautsack, creative director and media strategist for global media services firm MediaCom Vienna, said cities around the world are contemplating how their assets can be used to generate incremental revenue. “New York and (other) big cities, there is saturation there, but there are so many other cities in the world that ask for media because they know there are touchpoints out there and they’re not being used,” she says.
Krautsack says consumers will continue to welcome smart, relevant creative, regardless of where they encounter it. “It has to be a good idea and the people don’t care where it is,” she says. “It’s still the agency’s (responsibility) to find touchpoints, to have a great campaign, and it really doesn’t matter in the end where we put it as long as we see the limits and we research and don’t go too far. Where’s that line we shouldn’t cross?”
But while detractors are quick to accuse cities of “selling out” to advertisers, is it really a case of commerce trumping civic rights? After all, with their multimillion-dollar ad contracts, couldn’t it be argued outdoor ad companies are providing cities with desperately needed funds? (One person within the outdoor ad industry, for example, says that Toronto’s upcoming street furniture harmonization project will generate hundreds of millions in revenue for the city over the length of the 20-year contract.)
“Public space will continue to be the property of the public and administrators-we have no claim to who owns it,” says Astral’s Parisien. “What we’re saying is that there is a way to make use of it that benefits the community and the municipality. You can enhance the streetscape and generate a source of revenue that is very interesting for the municipalities to have some additional money to do things such as take care of the parks and playgrounds.
“What’s better,” he asks. “No advertising and the city pays the cost of everything, or you tolerate some advertising and the city pays nothing to have something that is fantastic and energizing for the city? It’s a question of judgment.”
So, these contracts provide the city with sorely needed revenue for beautification projects, road repairs, etc., the outdoor companies recoup their investment (and then some) through ad sales, and marketers get to showcase their goods and services in a highly visible ad medium. The one constituency missing from the equation, of course, is the public.
“I agree that (provincial) downloading has been really hard on the city. I don’t think anyone can argue that,” says the TPSC’s Nurwisah. “But I think the issue is how much money are you actually getting from advertising?” For example, Nurwisah pegs the value of CBS Outdoor Canada’s contract with the Toronto Transit Commission at about $13 million or $14 million a year-a relative pittance when compared with the system’s mammoth $1-billion operating budget.
“Thirteen million doesn’t seem like a lot, especially when the impact on the visual environment is so big,” says Nurwisah. “We’re talking whole streetcars wrapped in advertising, billboards moving up and down the street every day. That’s a huge impact on the visual environment. The city has to be careful of how much of that they allow,” Nurwisah says.
For their part, outdoor companies tend to portray groups like the TPSC as fringe organizations that don’t speak for the general public. They issue the standard bromide about consumers welcoming advertising that is relevant to their lives.
And while that may seem self-serving, an ongoing series of surveys regarding consumers’ attitudes to advertising conducted for Marketing by Toronto’s Leger Marketing suggests there’s at least some validity to their argument. For example, last year’s study of 1,500 Canadians age 18+ found that a majority (61%) of respondents deemed roadside billboards acceptable (up from 56% in 2004), while 75% considered posters in buses or subways acceptable, up from 70% a year earlier.
But consumers’ acceptance of such advertising techniques will likely continue to be tested. Like their counterparts in other media sectors, outdoor vendors are under constant pressure from clients and their media agencies to “push the envelope” in terms of innovation. Marketers are hungry for eye-catching creative and innovative executions, and Toronto is a city where outdoor companies seem able to fulfill their desires. In fact, one outdoor vendor calls it “the most lenient city there is in Canada” when it comes to enforcing outdoor advertising bylaws.
Such leniency might soon be coming to an end, however. In July, Toronto councillor Kyle Rae called a meeting of the city’s outdoor advertising firms-ranging in size from giants like Pattison Outdoor and CBS Outdoor Canada (formerly Viacom) to smaller operations like Abcon Media and Titan-in which he ordered them to remove what he says are “hundreds” of illegal billboards scattered throughout the city. According to Rae, whose ward encompasses much of the ad-saturated downtown core, many of these ads have been erected in contravention of sign bylaws, and have even been installed on heritage buildings.
The meeting prompted a number of outdoor ad companies to band together to address the city’s concerns. They have pledged to remove illegal signs and to comply with the city’s sign bylaw. It’s a noble gesture, but as has been demonstrated on countless occasions, marketers aren’t known for their restraint when it comes to devising attention-getting marketing.
In other words, Red Bull Square might not be such an impossibility.
