Atlanta's MARTA Buses Glow In The Dark To Sell Ads

MARTA an innovator in advertising
Newest creation: Bus wraps that glow in the dark

By PAUL DONSKY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 03/13/07

One of the most aggressive advertising innovators in metro Atlanta isn't a Fortune 500 company or a scrappy Internet upstart. It's MARTA, the regional transit system, which is selling space on its buses, trains and rail stations with the gusto of a NASCAR racing team.

Ads are shown on video screens hanging from rail platforms and on televisions bolted inside buses and rail cars. Buses and trains have been wrapped to create rolling billboards touting everything from new condominium towers to bail bondsmen. The transit system was the first in the nation to place ads inside subway tunnels in a way that creates short moving pictures for riders in passing trains.

MARTA has wrapped buses and trains to create rolling billboards touting everything from new condominium towers to bail bondsmen.


John Spink/Staff
(ENLARGE)
Advertising produces about $5 million in annual revenue for MARTA, a small percentage of its $324 million operating budget, but its marketing director thinks itÕs an area poised to grow.

This month, MARTA is pushing the envelope again, becoming the first to wrap buses in ads made from a special material that glows in the dark.

Glowing buses? Subway movies? TVs on trains? Welcome to advertising, 21st century style.

Companies are finding they must try new marketing techniques to stand out in today's ad-saturated world, said Ken Bern-

hardt, a marketing professor at Georgia State University.

"The key is how do you get noticed, and doing nontraditional things is a very effective way to get noticed," he said.

Marketers say MARTA is a good vehicle for companies because the transit system's ridership skews young, the most coveted demographic for advertisers. And the 100,000 to 120,000 passengers who ride the system each day are a captive audience, with time to kill whether waiting for a train or riding on a bus.

Of course, MARTA isn't the only nontraditional place ads are showing up. They're being beamed onto TV screens mounted in elevators, posted above urinals in bathrooms and, increasingly, disguised as e-mails from friends and colleagues.

But in MARTA, marketers have found an eager participant in the new advertising game. Until recently, the transit system has been struggling to make ends meet and desperate for new revenue streams. The economic downturn after the Sept. 11 attacks eroded MARTA's primary income stream, sales tax collections, and pushed the system to think outside the box.

Unlike most transit systems, MARTA gets no operating money from the state. Advertising brings in about $5 million a year for MARTA, a relatively small percentage of the transit system's $324 million operating budget. But it's an area poised to grow, said Tony Griffin, MARTA's director of marketing.

"The revenue hasn't been what we hoped it would be, but we hope down the road we've opened up a nice revenue source for the future," Griffin said.

MARTA was the nation's first transit system to put television screens in rail cars, and remains the only system with electronic signs in all rail stations.

"MARTA is a leader in terms of trying stuff," said Wendell Reilly, CEO of Atlanta-based SignPost Networks, which is paying MARTA about $144,000 a year to hang digital display screens throughout the rail system.

MARTA doesn't sell ads, leaving that work to advertising and media companies who pay the transit system for the right to wrap buses and place video screens on trains and in rail stations. MARTA doesn't pay for the equipment but does receive a percentage of ad sales.

Griffin stresses that the video and TV screens do much more than show ads.

The rail station monitors, for instance, provide riders with a steady stream of news, from sports scores to local headlines, sandwiched between short ad spots. At the bottom of the screen, a new feature counts down the minutes until the next train arrives. The bus TVs air local news reports, entertainment programs and MARTA news.

Sidney Daniels, 48, a regular MARTA bus rider, said he likes the feature.

"It's entertainment," he said. "It's convenient to everybody."

Advertising on MARTA has worked well for one small Atlanta company, Free at Last bail bonds, which has been putting its logo on MARTA buses since November 2005.

Business has gone up, prompting the company to sign a second yearlong contract. About half of Free at Last's marketing budget is now spent on MARTA bus ads, said Jennifer Greene-Dallam, the company's CEO.

The ads are successful because it takes little effort to watch a bus rolling by, she said.

"The Yellow Pages, you have to actually open the book," she said. "Hopefully, you've seen our bus running on the streets. It's brand recognition."

Until the 1990s, MARTA took a restrained approach to advertising. Buses completely wrapped in ads didn't become common until just before the 1996 Summer Olympics.

MARTA's advertising thirst does have limits. MARTA has no plans to sell naming rights for a rail station. Liquor ads are not permitted, either.

The subway tunnel ads remain a pilot project. No plans are in the works to make the ads a permanent part of MARTA's arsenal, officials said. The lone subway ad in place, for Lexus, is scheduled to be removed within three months.

At least one MARTA board member, the Rev. Walter Kimbrough, says he'd like to see the system stop wrapping buses.

"If you see a MARTA bus that is wrapped, you don't really know that it's a MARTA bus," he said, noting that suburban bus systems have begun running in downtown and Midtown in recent years. "There will be markings on it, but you really have to look for that. And the uniformity is gone."

Reilly, the SignPost CEO, says the 145 digital screens he's installed in MARTA rail stations reach about 300,000 individual viewers each week — a figure measured by Arbitron, the same agency that monitors radio station listenership. If SignPost was a radio station, Reilly boasts it would rank among the top 10 in metro Atlanta.

To attract viewers, SignPost broadcasts news and information in 10-minute loops and developed the "next train" feature, what Reilly calls his "killer app." Short ads are shown every 10 to 20 minutes. The information's providers include CNN, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Reuters. SignPost gets the information free, while the content providers are able to spread their brand name to MARTA riders.

"What we're trying to do is give the MARTA rider the same thing that the automobile rider has, which is a radio," Reilly said. "It's visual radio."