The great outdoors

"What's the plot?" I asked.

"Traffic jams on the motorways surrounding Joeys. The outdoor guys have got a finger in the pie"

And so, for the next half an hour, we examined the issue.

Think about it, one of the disadvantages of outdoor advertising is that the speed of passing traffic decreases potential readability and therefore efficiency. The slower the traffic, the more likely that people will see the posters that now line our roadways. And, if you can get the traffic to stop altogether, all the better

The Gauteng government seems to appreciate this. Their outdoor campaign promising a better future for us Gauties, is a creative breakthrough in outdoor usage. The equivalent of ten point vanishing copy, five pics and poorly constructed grammar does require a ten-minute stop to read. And, cleverly, one of these is placed at a point where the roads department appears unable to fix the expansion joints, causing all traffic to come to a halt.

It is all a plot. Everybody gains. Travelers have the chance of getting important information, they would otherwise have missed, the government slows down traffic without the police trapping and the outdoor media companies win. Adex reports a 21% increase in spending on outdoor advertising this year... is this in proportion to the increase in the incidence of motorway grid-locks? we asked.

As I left, I made a mental note to contact Paul Haupt at SAARF to ask whether they intended adding an "average speed/traffic jam/grid-lock" question to their outdoor measurement in AMPS. And, also, to send a note to OASA to think about raising the outdoor advertising rates where these grid locks and traffic jams occur.