I was recently in Beijing, China with my little sister as we were taking the Trans Mongolian railway from Beijing to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia followed by Trans-Siberian railway from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia to Irkutsk, Russia and then from Irkutsk, Russia all the way across to Moscow and St. Petersburg and then from St. Petersburg, Russia across to Finland in Helsinki.
And we’ve been doing all of the main touristy stuff, going and seeing the Great Wall, the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace and many things like that and a lot of the time (because we’re not locals) we don’t take taxis, we don’t have a car and we walk everywhere or we take the subway.
The subway in Beijing is very orderly, very clean, very efficient.
And we’ve been catching quite a few of these subways to and from our destinations that we’re going to and most of the time we have to stand up because there’s too many people sitting down or just taking the subway in general.
And most of the things are in Mandarin which we can’t read obviously, but just having a look around, keeping my eyes open just to see what’s out there, as you do when you are a tourist in a foreign country.
One of the things that stood out to me, especially being a marketing and sales professional was the advertising that was done in the subways.
And what I mean by that is we’re catching a subway (obviously underground) and in the subway tunnels, not in the train itself, are some advertising on the walls of the subway tunnels.
Now it’s interesting because a lot of the subway when you get on the train is obviously (like we are all used to) advertisements on many of the edges of the train almost like mini billboards on the top of the roof and on the sides of the train.
So a lot of that stuff has already been taken.
So what I did see was a very innovative way of creating advertising both in terms of its placement but also in terms of the technology.
Looking out the window of these trains, you look into a dark tunnel (and the walls are dark) and you can’t see anything out of them.
Now, having this many people (in Beijing my understanding is about 22 million people that live there) – with this this volume of people, mass transportation traveling all these people to and from their locations and there’s dead space or is unutilized real estate (advertising real estate) that sits on these tunnel walls.
However, the problem with that is that they are dark and you can’t illuminate them very easily and if you could illuminate e them with a light, these trains are going something like I imagine is calculated about 80 km an hour.
Looking out the window to get an ad and to have a look at that at that ad at about a meter distance from the train window to the wall is going to be almost virtually impossible.
So what someone has identified is that there’s this issue that there is prime real estate on these walls, but also the problem I just identified where it’s really difficult for you to look and read an advertisement that swings past your eyes in a very small window (literally a small physical window) of a train for you to be able to read it.
So what they have done is said there is this unutilized wall of a subway and we’re going to create an innovation allows people to view something that’s on there and in that case when a monetize it by creating an advertisement space and then selling that advertisement space.
So basically what happens is when you whizzing past at 80 kilometers an hour in of these subway trains between stations you look out the window and you’ve got literally a one by one meter window that you’re looking out of and there is a screen (and this is what I imagine it to be because I haven’t researched it) it is just like a flat screen TV on the wall, but there are butt end to each other in what I imagine would be about a 200 meter sequence so you’ve got perhaps 150 flat screen large televisions back-to-back running across the side of this subway train.
Now again you’re probably wondering how can you whizzing past 80 kilometers an hour have a look out this train window and view something?
And this is where the innovation has come in.
What they are doing (as I imagine) is they are showing an advertisement on these 150 screens all simultaneously.
However, that the movement of the image is running at the same direction and the same pace.
So in other words if the train is going North-South, the image or the advertisement on the television is also running North-South and that the train is going 80 kilometers an hour, the advertisement image video image on that television is also going at 80 kilometers an hour.
Now as you’re whizzing past this 200 meter wall of televisions, each one of those individual televisions are also racing in the same direction – a video image of an advertisement in the same direction as you.
It’s almost like a flipbook, but instead of going through from depth, front to back with a flip book it’s almost going the same direction as you in the train.
Which means when you look out the window you are looking at an advertisement that sticks with the train at the perfect, exact pace.
So it is basically for all intents and purposes another advertisement is sitting inside the window of the train.
So all of the other advertisement spaces that are around the train, on the roof and at the head an eye height for you to view, the windows also now have this advertisement on it.
So instead of sticking the advertisement to the window (which for obvious reasons when you get to a station makes it difficult for many different reasons to look out to see if you’ve got the train station to see how busy it is and so on and so forth,) you’re actually just looking out the window an advertisement at times that a dead you don’t and can’t see anything anyway because it is dark.
So what I really like about this is that it’s using prime real estate as I said at the very start, but also the thing I really love about it is the technology that is used – something is really low tech applied to this very, very specific problem to utilize it for a missed opportunity that can be monetized.
A very, very simple solution for a problem that not many people have been able to fix or solve already.
So how could you possibly use this in what you are doing?
I think the main takeaway I like you to take from this is look to where there are opportunities where others don’t actually see it.
Most people just look at this and say this is idle space and nothing can be done with that.
Maybe many have tried to put or lobby to have advertisements on the window and the failed with that.
Obviously it’s prime real estate that is unutilized, so how can you in whatever you are doing and trying to do with your marketing and sales – how can you utilize existing technology in a new and unique way to bridge the gap between that problem a solution.
So in summary I think this is really really useful thing that has been done in advertising and I really like the technology and the use of it in solving a problem that has never or has not been solved in this way very often before.