Why Is The Toilet Poster Not A Standard Advertising Medium Yet?

Recently I posted a question on yahoo answers to better understand what peoples attitudes are towards toilet advertising. The overall response was overwhelmingly positive, with one person boldly stating that it is the only advertising that still has an impact on him.

A study conducted at Rice university has shown that the retention of the marketing message is 40% more effective than retention for any other media.

Barbour and Monroe’s survey data concluded that:

• 84% recalled seeing specific advertisements in the restrooms.

• 92% were able to name specific advertisers without prompting.

• 88% recalled at least FOUR selling points in the ads surveyed.

• 98% reacted positively or neutral to seeing ads in restroom facilities, as is now backed by my yahoo answers experiment.

These are all very impressive figures compared to any other media, and as the study via yahoo answers shows, the media isn’t viewed in a negative way by the general public, in fact, most lauded toilet advertising as a welcome distraction.

It proves that it is the advert that makes the campaign relevant, not the environment. Unilever’s Axe (known as Lynx in the UK) understood this brilliantly and used the toilet environment to its benefit. Look at some of their brilliant ideas here

Toilet advertising is a channel that is open to innovation: planners can choose from a plethora of formats: A3 panels, stickers, lenticular, bluetooth, wi-fi, talking posters, etc. And the recently added option of direct response media pads has greatly added to the effectiveness of direct response campaigns.

Here we have a media that is 100% lifestyle and gender targeted, offers a captive audience away from clutter producing advertising campaigns with zero wastage, yet toilet posters are still not recognized as mainstream media.

Ridiculous...

Andrew Schooling passionately believes toilet advertising should be lifted out of the ‘ambient’ category and accepted as a standard format.

Source: www.articlecity.com