Advertisers have long been drawn to Times Square as a valuable place to reach consumers, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for space on billboards and blazing video screens.But recently they have discovered that down on the ground, new technology has given low cost, face-to-face marketing campaigns something of a cutting edge as consumers spread their messages on the Internet.
Take the recent display of public toilets set up by Charmin bathroom tissue: Used by thousands in Times Square and viewed by 7,400 Web users on one site alone. Or Nascar’s recent display of racecars; videos of the event have been viewed on YouTube more than 1,800 times. More than 60 people wrote about the event on their blogs and 60 more spread the word — and pictures — on the Flickr Web site.
“The great thing about the digital world is you can capture these events,” said Christian McMahan, brand director for Smirnoff Ice, owned by Diageo. “People can see them whether they were there that day or 3,000 miles away.”
As a result of the growing popularity of consumer-generated pictures, videos and e-mail messages on Internet sites like YouTube and Myspace, advertisers are getting consumers to essentially do their jobs for them.
When Target, the discount store operator, suspended the magician David Blaine above Times Square for two days during the week of Thanksgiving, videos shot by viewers were posted on YouTube and viewed more than 19,300 times.
“Times Square is becoming, in a way, a publishing platform,” said Peter Stabler, director of communication strategy for Goodby, Silverstein and Partners, an advertising agency that is part of the Omnicom Group. “What happens in Times Square is no longer strictly the province of location. You can experience things that are happening there, even if you’re not there.”
On sites like YouTube, Flickr and MySpace, an army of tourists and residents are spreading advertisers’ messages well beyond Manhattan, using their cell phones and video cameras as they walk through the marketing crossroads of the world.
Consumer brand companies are taking advantage of that by hosting elaborate events, fully aware that those events are great fodder for footage. Hosting events in Times Square, advertisers said, is like buying product placement in a TV show or a movie — except the cameras are held by consumers and the placement is on the Internet.
Experiential marketing, as the ad industry calls such campaigns, is intended to give people something they can tryout and photograph. Companies are holding such events in cities around the world, but advertisers said Times Square was unparalleled in its reach. People around the world recognize Times Square in photos and videos online and are more likely to view them, marketers said.
Charmin’s bathrooms, which opened on Broadway near West 46th Street on Nov. 20, generated traditional coverage with more than 100 articles published about the fancy toilets. But consumer videos posted on YouTube alone have been viewed more than 7,400 times.
Hundreds of other people each week post photos and videos on their blogs and MySpace pages. One blog post last week, “Der New York Trip Part II”, written in German, shows a young couple posing with the Charmin bear. Charmin is a brand of Procter & Gamble.
Another post about the Charmin toilets last week on a Web design blog wondered, “Could this be too much marketing?” Christian Montoya, the site’s author, videotaped the bathrooms when he visited Times Square on Thanksgiving so that he could post the footage online for his roughly 700 daily readers. Though Mr. Montoya, a senior at Cornell University, said he was skeptical of marketing but thought the Charmin bathrooms were effective.
“It was more than a billboard because you could actually try the product,” Mr. Montoya said.
It is difficult to count exactly how many people pass through Times Square each day, but foot traffic by some measures has nearly doubled. In 1997, the Times Square Business Improvement District counted 8,702 people an hour passing through the most crowded parts of Times Square during the busiest times of year. This year, the Times Square Alliance found that nearly double that amount — about 15,000 people — passed the Virgin Megastore on Broadway during busy hours.
But, advocates of experiential marketing say headcounts in Times Square underestimate the district’s impact. Face-to-face interaction with customers is more powerful than traditional ads, they say.
“What people do is geometrically more powerful than what they are told,” said Brian Collins, chief creative officer of Ogilvy and Mather Brand Innovation Group, a part of the WPP Group. “Feeling something, picking it up in your hands, walking into an environment is a far more powerful brand promise than anything you are simply told through traditional media alone.”
On the day after Thanksgiving, Diageo’s Smirnoff Ice brand held a tongue-in-cheek rally featuring about 30 paid actors as “core protestors.” The theme was “save the mistletoe,” a slogan for a holiday campaign for Smirnoff Ice. Smirnoff estimates that 60,000 people passed by its four-hour rally.
“When you go into an arena that is so iconic like Times Square, people are looking to be entertained,” said Christian McMahan, brand director for Smirnoff Ice. “And they’re looking to be part of it.”
In April, General Electric rented nine digital billboards in Times Square and displayed photos of people passing by. People on the street photographed themselves standing below the billboards when their images appeared. Soon, those images were circulating online.
“It’s much more interactive,” said Judy Hu, the global executive director for advertising and branding at G.E. “You’ve got people who are e-mailing, sending messages, they’re involved with your brand personally as opposed to just viewing it.”
G.E. and other companies that hosted recent events would not divulge their costs, but they said the total came out surprisingly low compared with other forms of marketing.
The mayor’s office said permits to use Times Square areas started at $25,000 but often cost $50,000 or more for a day, and that 112 marketers had paid for permits this year.
The amount of marketers in Times Square has soared this year in large part because three traffic islands there were made available on a regular basis this year for the first time as part of Mayor Bloomberg’s broader initiative to attract more tourists to New York City.
In February, Walt Disney World sent Hans Florine, the X-games gold medal climber, scaling up a billboard to promote Expedition Everest, a new Animal Kingdom park ride. Mickey Mouse was also there, but he stayed on the ground.
In early December, MasterCard carolers sang holiday songs and passed out hot chocolate; street vendors sold coffee in Ann Taylor Loft paper cups; and a Sovereign Bank team rode red Segways passing out shopping bags and subway maps.
But some advertising executives wonder if it might be reaching the saturation point.
“It is now getting to the point,” said Lori Robinson, senior vice president of Hill and Knowlton, the WPP Group agency that helped produce one event, “where there just might be a little too much going on in Times Square.”
(NewYorkTimes)
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