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ChineseIs Wall-E Riding Metro?
Though a near impossibility to believe, it seems Metro is taking some pages from other transit agency’s playbooks across the globe. No they’re not embracing the subway to the sea or pink line or green to the airport or this or that like they should, but in advertising they’re scratching the surface.
One thing I’ve certainly noticed when visiting other cities and nations (London, Paris, Montreal, among others) they take advertising to another level. While LA is stuck back in the print age these other transit agencies are keeping with the times and digitizing their advertising for more flash, more creativity and, one must assume, more money. The closest thing Metro has is the obtrusive and annoying Transit TV, which has improved to include large corps like Wamu, Coke, and NBC, but the brunt of it is still just low yield cell phone ring tone and debt consolidation commercials.
Therefore when I was riding the Red Line to the valley this Sunday afternoon I was blown away by the screens that lined the walls between Hollywood and Highland and Universal City which blazed quite nicely blue and white light advertising for the movie Wall-E. The cute little Johnny 5 (notice the awesome song) ripoff was flying through space and looking at little bugs just like we all remember Steve Guttenberg doing so long ago. It was cute as can be and equally effective. I still haven’t a clue what the movie is about but I know when it hits theatres (June 27th). The screens, how many I’m not sure, made the ad about 10 seconds long and we see them twice. Who funded them initially I haven’t any idea and what Metro charges I don’t know but it was certainly the center of everyone on the train’s attention as we passed them.
I know anytime advertising comes up in regards to Metro there is an immediate anti-ad sentiment, which has always blown me away. Mostly because it comes from bleeding heart libz that don’t actually use the service but enjoy the argument of aesthetics over big corporations. Of course they don’t ever see their services cut because of lack of funds, they just feel it’s their right to ride in an ad free environment five times a year. And I’m generalizing and being a tad bitter but ever since I’ve taken Metro its always shocked me that advertising wasn’t more apparent. Not because I just LOVE advertising and absolutely need flashing posters waking me from my dull life, but because I’m not a hypocritical lunatic and know it’s a very important source of income for a system that operates in the red in a country that gives top billing to highways and cars while public transit gets only the Tuesday dollar matinees. Transit agencies need this money much more than we all need our ad-free purity.
This type of advertising is a step in the right direction. It’s unique and flashy and will allow for bigger companies who want something more than just mini posters on every third train covered in scrathiti.
Discussion
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I believe once we build a few more key pieces to our transit system like Expo Line to Santa Monica, Regional Connector and Green Line to LAX, etc we’ll have enough destinations and network build out for Metro to be a lot more aggresive towards advertising at the Metro Stations. One of the issues is not that Metro can’t do it, they wouldn’t get a high return from the advertisers because of the size and scope of our system compared to the other systems mentioned with a dense urban rail network.
Since our stations are at-grade this could play to our advantage since they are very visible to the pedestrian and if you have a walkable pedestrian friendly environment like Pasadena or Long Beach adding the advertisments would add a little color to the streetscape.
Ironically enough, Wall-E is a movie about how rampant consumerism turned Earth into a big ball of garbage. Humans evacuated Earth and left a bunch of robots to clean it all up. All the robots broke down except for one, and that’s “Wall-E”.
Despite the film’s message, there’s still Wall-E action figures, massive Wall-E advertising blitz, soundtrack CD, theme park attraction, El Capitan super premium reserved seating, and a video game adaptation.
I wonder if more robots will be brought in to clean all this shit up.
You haven’t seen transit advertising until you’ve seen San Diego.
Jerard: you cant make movies for nothing. investors want there investment back
Here’s a Times Story about this, btw.
Does MTA do “ad wrappers” on trains or busses yet?
Like other forms of transit advertising, they offend some peoples’ aesthetics, but as a regular transit rider, I generally just feel like “Hey, my train looks different today. Cool!”
i’m with you 295. who freakin cares. when i was in minneapolis, the entire light rail was covered in an IKEA ad. i really couldn’t care less cuz i’m the person riding it. i’m the person who uses the service. perhaps in a perfect world transit agencies wouldn’t need to whore themselves for the extra cash but sadly out nation isn’t exactly doling out the money to support public transit so they need to get the money where they can get it. back like a year ago when i first saw the super plastering of mcdonald’s 1/3 lb angus burgers at 7th/metro i couldn’t have been happier!
Wall E is better than the Car Culture Classic Speed Racer which was the first movie to advertise on Metro’s station screens…Wall E almost has to have a smarter message than “cars are really awesome, but the bestest one you can.
295bus, there are ad wrappers on numerous MTA buses. Usually it’s for trashy TV and such, but sometimes you get a car dealership (Keyes Group of Van Nuys comes to mind) using the buses for ad wrappers.
I recall that either CTA or Metra in Chicago turned down ads from car insurers. Surprising, considering that lately they’ve been much harder up for cash than LACMTA.
oh man… cta and metra are effed so hard. however, they’ve got those olympics so they’re going nuts on building the L better. i go there once a month and ohare is effed cuz of the blue line construction which will be awesome in like 10 months. thats y i was hoping LA would win the US bid cuz that forces the city to step it up. even if it ends up bankrupting shit… doesn’t matter cuz the fed will bail us out and the rest of the country will have to pay for it. i.e. big dig and airlines, i just wish our city was the one profiting.
I generally don’t mind the ads, but there are a few stations where the community invested indepentend efforts to get them to be even nicer than normal - namely, Hollywood & Vine. I don’t mind ads at Union Station or Metro Center, or at my Koreatown Normandie and Western stations, but H&V is such an artistically-planned station that covering up all of the art with ads just bugs me.
By the way, Tyke, the feds didn’t completely bail out the Big Dig - Boston is in a deep hole as a result of dealing with that, and there are T projects on hold as a result :(. It’s a bad situation. Not as bad as OC declaring bankruptcy, but I’m sure that Boston City Comptroller is among the worst jobs on the East Coast right now, or at least it was 5 years ago.
I’m with ya on this one Tyke. I’d even be ok with entire stations being named after companies, if it meant the subway got built sooner.