After years of being dominated by real estate agents and personal injury lawyers, advertising space on L.A.’s bus benches is attracting a hipper clientele
Pity no longer the lowly bus bench. Long the poor stepchild of the advertising world less glamorous than broadcast media and unable to compete with the sheer size of its billboard cousins the ubiquitous bus bench is experiencing a marketing renaissance.
What’s more, they owe their revived success to television.
There are an estimated 10,000 bus benches in the city of Los Angeles, and ever since ABC’s 1999 “TV is Good” campaign, which included the use of more than 2,000 MTA bus benches, business has been booming.
“Networks started calling me after the ABC promotion,” said Steven Aguilar, national accounts manager for Coast United/Norman Bench. “Before that campaign, when I’d call the networks, they’d hang up on me.”
The result: an increasing number of image-conscious organizations like record companies and clothing store chains are using bus benches raising the bar on bench artwork in the process.
For every example of old-fashioned blocked copy, like 800-USA-BEEP in Van Nuys, there are others with stylized ads like the bench featuring the cover art of former Jane’s Addiction frontman Perry Farrell’s new album in Westwood.
Aguilar, whose company has the exclusive leasing rights for bus benches in the city of Los Angeles, estimated the monthly rate for a 2-by-7-foot bench at $100 per month, compared with $3,000 for a 14-by-48-foot billboard or $600 for a 12-by-25-foot billboard. “You can get a boatload of benches for the cost of a few bulletins or billboards,” said Aguilar.
What’s more, given the state of L.A.’s pubic transportation system and its appurtenant traffic woes, it’s likely an advertiser will be buying unobstructed space with a lot of eyeball time.
That’s what Lucky Brand Dungarees has been counting on. The Vernon-based company has a 400-bench advertising campaign throughout West Los Angeles, West Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley. Barry Perlman, Lucky Brand co-founder, credited his partner Gene Montesano for both the idea of using the buddha image (a symbol of good luck) and the bus bench’s tag line: “Sit here, get Lucky.”
Retro approach
While media companies and clothing brands associate bus benches with a sense of urbanity and immediacy, Mount Sinai Memorial Parks uses one of the more curious associations: mortuaries.
Dan Katz, creative director of PKPF Advertising, advised his clients at Mount Sinai to use bus benches because so many local mortuaries had done so in the past.
“We decided to pick a medium that people equated with that kind of business,” said Katz. “The medium was the message.” Katz also views a bus company’s liability as an advertiser’s asset. “The odds of someone sitting on the bench covering (the ad) up are spare,” said Katz. “Chances are that no one is sitting on the bench.”
Updated designs, however, haven’t been enough to change certain communities’ stance on outdoor advertising. Long perceived as an eyesore, image-conscious municipalities like Santa Monica have declined potential revenues by barring ads on bus benches.
“It’s a longstanding policy of the city not to do advertising in general,” said Janet Rambeau, assistant to the city manager, adding that the policy “keeps the city free from visual clutter.”
But what’s a bane to some city governments can be a blessing to others. Besides L.A., smaller municipalities are taking the hint. Whereas communities like Huntington Beach and Westminster used to make exclusive deals with bench-leasing companies they now put the leasing rights up for bid, according to Gateway Outdoor Advertising Vice President Raymond Primicias.
Christy Schuler of Industry-based Outdoor Vision, the company responsible for ABC’s outdoor advertising account, noted that the success of the network’s campaign had one unintended effect on the bench advertising market. “We can’t even get space anymore,” said Schuler. “It’s all sold out.”
