Time to play: Name that subway line
By adamg - 11/18/09 - 8:21 pm
One of these ads is from the Red Line and one is from the Orange Line. Can you match the ad to the line? Answer after the jump.
The top ad is from the Red Line (where Kendall Square startups advertise for Java programmers); the bottom ad is from the Orange Line (where adult-ed classes advertise for students).
Comments
Read the Orange Line ad more closely
Steppingstone is not an "adult-ed program". It is a preteen-to-teen program. The ad says:
"We accept hardworking Boston students in 4th-7th grade, and we stay with them until they get to college."
Also, I see plenty of adult-education ads on the Red Line -- Harvard Extension, BU Metropolitan College, UMass-Boston, Northeastern, etc.
Sloppy wording on my part
Yeah, I know that ad isn't for adult ed. But for every Java-programmer ad on the Red Line, there's an adult-ed (or non-surgical treatment of fibroids) ad on the Orange Line.
Also, the Red Line has far more ads for clinical trials (although I see there's now an ad on the Orange Line looking for, I think, veterans with PTSD, for some clinical trial).
I've seen the geneious add
I've seen the geneious add on the Orange Line.
Ah!
Well, then, I guess I overreached on this one.
I dont think you did. The
I dont think you did. The "Good without God" ads were placed on the green and red lines only. While ridership numbers may be the reason....I think demographics came into play when they didn't chose the blue and orange lines.
Curious. I have yet to see a single "Good Without God" ad
on the Green Line. Perhaps that's because of the T's obnoxious "station domination" ad policies (like the Comcast, Diet Coke and iPod campaigns currently in place on the Green Line), which discrminate against smaller businesses and groups who would want to place only a handful of ads at key stations in the system.
Memo to T ad gurus - if you broke your ad space selling up into smaller groups of spaces (or even individual spaces in some areas), you could easily make more money then you do now by encouraging saturation bombing of your passengers by the marketing execs.
No, they're probably making more money that way
Possibly big assumption on my part, but I'm going to assume the company that handles ads on the T actually charges more for carpet bombing like that (so let's all thank the beautiful island of Aruba for sending us back some of the money Bostonians have spent down there).
Online, it's charmingly called "roadblocking," and my previous place of employment charged a premium for taking up all the ad space on a page.
Hmm, if the station is large enough, you can actually double the fun. Look at South Station, where the commuter rail/Amtrak terminal is dominated by Apple ads, but the subway platforms are filled with Windows 7 ads.
The stats don't lie
It seems that way, but there's an iPhone app that collects geotagged camera shots along the Red and Orange lines, creates a 3D photosynth, OCRs the whole thing and analyzes the industry sector of all the ads. Turns out the adult-ed posters are 23% more prevalent on the Red Line. The source code's posted at Kendall.
Is it also possible that
Is it also possible that there are more camera phones taking pictures of Adult Ed posters on the Red Line?
Twitter me this!
I'll guess one will find
I'll guess one will find more of the Java ads on the Braintree trains than on the Ashmont.
Same equipment on both Red Line branches
so that's not likely.
Don't neglect the Red Line's
Don't neglect the Red Line's Aruba vacations or gay domestic violence ads!
Aruba on the way to Forest Hills
They not only had entire Orange Line cars full of Aruba ads, they even changed them halfway through the campaign (remember the ad with the two kids that you couldn't tell at first what gender they were? Initially, they seemed to be portrayed as gadabouts who were too busy with surfing and steel-drum playing to go to school; then they just became boring tourism-bureau parrots).