Its origin is debated, but one of the classic marketing quotes (and conundrums) is:
"Half of my advertising budget is wasted. The problem is, I don't know what half."
Well, here's the answer:
BUS ADVERTISING IN WINTER
Over the past couple of weeks, at home in Montreal and on vacation in Vail, I marveled at how utterly inefficient bus backs and sides are when fighting the elements from December to March. Some of them got so filthy that they were totally, unequivocally illegible. Even the buses that were lucky enough to get an overnight wash saw their ad panels caked in slush and grime by lunchtime.
In many cases, without Superman's X-ray vision and a good pair of glasses, you'd be hard pressed to even venture a guess at the identity of a company and/or its message. Why an advertiser would want to showcase its valued brand under a layer of yuck is a mystery to me (unless, of course, they play with the medium, and use the filth as part of the message...but I digress), but that mystery only serves to solve the one laid out at the top of this post.
At best, given the pipe dream of an everyday wash throughout the winter months, by mid-day, Mother Nature will be your bus ad's creative director, and she's using a skanky palate of greys, blacks and browns. Without a brush. Tossing 'em about like a combination of Jack Frost and Jackson Pollack.
So unless you're selling ugly, you're wasting half your budget.
At least half of it...
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UPDATE:
This just in courtesy of Bernie Malinoff...how winter yuck can kill your brand: