Marketing Communications

270 CHAPTER 8 MEDIA PLANNING

Photo 8.2 TioPepe advertises outdoors

Source: Corbis: John Hicks.

One of the challenges of effective advertising is to find media that are selective and result in a guaranteed, undisturbed

high-quality exposure of the message to the target group. Since the late 1990s, Indoor Media, a Belgian advertising

agency that specialises in ‘indoor media’ applications, has successfully run the Vespasius network: thousands of

posters in the toilets of movie theatres, cafés and discotheques. You cannot ignore the posters. They are at eye level,

and everyone spends enough time at the toilet to enable them to read the ad. At first, mainly products for young people

were thought suitable for advertising through this channel. But recently more ‘serious’ companies have also discovered

the potential of this medium. For instance, Axa-bank uses Vespasius advertising. For €50 000, Axa is on 2200 Vespasius

posters for two weeks, making it a very cost-effective medium. But companies like Dior are not convinced. They fear

the ‘the medium is the message’ effect: a toilet is hardly a supportive context for selling a luxury product. Indoor

Media does not agree, saying: ‘Where do you think women use perfume when they go out? In the toilet, of course!’

Recently, the company has also run a network of posters in fitting cubicles. A credit card company was the first to

advertise. These cubicles have the same advantage as toilets. They are separate for men and women, just like toilets,

and, depending on the shop or the café, they allow exposure to different lifestyle and age groups. People are more

inclined to give their undivided attention to the message in toilets than in fitting cubicles but, to guarantee maximum

exposure, the ads are placed as close as possible to the row of pegs. Further, since people walk in and out of the

cubicles frequently during one shopping visit, there is repetitive exposure to the message in a short period of time.^34

business insight

Indoor Media: advertising in toilets and fitting cubicles

However, people do not feel highly involved in billboards or transit advertising and usually

do not pay a lot of attention to them. Furthermore, only a limited amount of information can

be conveyed. Targeting or selective reach is not possible, since all kinds of people will see the

messages. Usually, there is no context that can add value to the message.

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