All kinds of digital goodies are infiltrating night spots, including smart customer cards, computerized ordering systems, MP3 jukeboxes, and urinal ads that talk to you:
- "Urinal ads are the most effective form of advertising in a club," said nightclub consultant Dave Hollingworth. "Guys don't want to look at each other in the urinal. They're more than happy to stare at an ad," he said, noting that over the next year, male clubgoers will see more video monitors in bathrooms.
For now, microchips are being combined with motion sensors to create chatty advertisements in the bathroom. Patrons who think the ad above the urinal is talking to them haven't had too much Old Style--it's an increasingly popular way for bathroom ads to get noticed.
Right now, the best place to see the revolution at work is at Lava Lounge in Wicker Park, where ads for the Chicago Tribune's RedEye edition begin talking after patrons close the bathroom door. [Chicago Tribune]
Article comments
1 - The Theory
as long as i can relieve myself, i don't care what propoganda they're throwing at me.
peace.
2 - barbara flaska
You know, I'm really not an advanced thinker or trendsetter in any way, but I did post something about this possibility at least six months ago on my very own blog. Which I have excerpted below from my original long rant on the uninspired placement of bland name music in the malls, shoppes, coffee houses, and yuppie kiosks everywhere:
"I know I am inventing the wheel here. Combining merchandising with merchandising, I came up
with the idea of real “tinkle music.”
This can be a multi-level ad attack. My idea is musical splash mats in men’s urinals.
A variation of the squeeze for play sound device, soothing instrumentals from a celeste could resound at the long sink in the men’s room during a relief stop.
Don’t worry, these devices can be implanted in the deoderant splash bars, too, so there is no men’s room anywhere in the nation that wouldn’t be available to these artists. Women’s rooms, too.
For both “men and women” the cd display could be placed strategically on a bamboo easel on the stainless steel shelf right under the mirror.
The attendant who provides the handtowel or brushes the stray hair off the shoulders of the suit could then put to use some of that free time they waste standing around waiting to be summoned for service to politely collect a twenty for the disc.
How long, then, before the cd is included with a four-pack of toilet paper, a cheap enticement that costs the manufacturer scarcely a penny to better prompt the consumer selection for that brand of tidy-wipes?
I wonder who’s going to be the first to do this. If I had made the mistake of leasing my music in
any of the above referenced ways, I would be groveling and asking for forgiveness."
3 - Eric Olsen
Barbara, you were prescient indeed. You should put more of your stuff on Blogcritics as well as your own site - double the exposure.
4 - Paul
When I lived in Japan during the mid-90's, I had the opportunity to converse with a western-style toilet at a Dunkin Donuts in Roppongi.
I left my deposit, got up and turned around to find the flush handle thingy when the toilet flushed itself and said something in Japanese to me.
Of course, everything in Japan talks, and always with a feminine voice. Truck backing up? No annoying beeps, but a female voice saying, "Beware!" over and over again.
I also had an interesting conversation with a vending machine when it took my 500 yen coin and wouldn't give me my Royal Milk Tea in return. I punched it, kicked it and cursed at it, but all it could say was, "Thank You, please make a choice."
"That is not available" But the little red light wasn't on. I knew there was Milk Tea in there, the machine was trying to be difficult. It wouldn't give my yen back, either.
5 - The Theory
haha... that sucks.
peace.
6 - Tim Paynter
If they hurl right wing propaganda at me I would feel like my aim was on target.