Advertising: There's No Escape

Long ago, someone very clever realized that public rest rooms make great places to advertise. What was usually being advertised, unfortunately, was an ex-girlfriend's easy virtue. It took a while, but now better-organized and richly financed marketing campaigns by Snapple and Comedy Central, among others, are capitalizing on the potential of stalls and urinals--numerous flat surfaces, a steady procession of customers and, most important, a consumer sure to be fixed in one place for long minutes with nowhere else to look.

While many may find this development invasive or downright creepy, it's important to see things from the point of view of the advertisers. Not so long ago, they could reach the majority of the North American viewing public by running commercials on the three broadcast TV networks. But with the advent of cable, VCRs, mute buttons and newer technologies like the one used in TiVo, the audience has fractured into hundreds of niches not only able but likely to skip commercials. Advertisers today have to get their butts off the figurative couch and work outside the living room. They have to become hunters adept at tracking the consumer prey. They're investing millions to learn your habits, tastes and routines, when you commute, recreate and flush--and they're using this intelligence to pitch their products at a moment when you can't possibly turn away.

They call this approach captive marketing, and it's flourishing not only in rest rooms but in elevators, stores, movie theaters and taxis. Technology enables companies to reach you where you shop, on the golf course or even on a commuter bus. While you might view a two-minute elevator ride as a rare moment for quiet reflection, advertisers see it as a time when no one else has your attention. When you call your bank to activate your credit card, you get put on hold and pummeled with ads for the bank and its marketing "partners," who know that you know that if you hang up, you lose your place in the telephonic queue. "The base appeal of this trend is that the audience can't opt out," says Dennis Roche, 37, U.S. president of Zoom Media, based in Montreal, which places ads in bathrooms.

Chances are, the number of formerly private places in which you can be targeted will grow. Although it is too early to quantify, captive marketing may benefit from events like the war in the gulf, which prompted many major advertisers to pull ads out of TV shows, newspapers and magazines for fear of being associated with negative images or, if their ads are lighthearted, of seeming insensitive. Some of these advertisers will instead try to reach you in one or more of the following unexpected locations: