Coming To Your World

If you've read between the lines of the Bike Lane Blog, you have probably discerned that it's written by somebody in Trek's marketing department. This is because that as a marketer I have the years of skilled journalistic training that it takes to write something people would actually want to read. It's also because that marketers are some of the only people who posess the ego large enough to believe that other people actually care about their thoughts and opinions.  Today however, it's not my opinions I'm interested in. It's yours.

If you watch "Mad Men" (Best Show Ever not named "Entourage") you may think that marketing is really just wearing a skinny tie, drinking too much, and cheating on your spouse while you smoke cigarretes in your office. That's really only half of what we marketers do. The rainy season has reached us in the Loo and pretty soon it will be snowy season which then spills into road constructy season. Road constructy season is what we live for because hopefully some roads are in enough shape to ride a bicycle on. Perhaps a shiny new Trek bicycle? You should buy a new Trek bicycle. See, just marketed to you and you didn't even see it coming.
 
  Subliminal advertising (like the kind I just dropped on you) is really the next wave. Aside from giving marketers an outlet for creativity and often returning higher rates of recollection and action (the holy grail of advertising) they can often liven up the environment around you. Why go subliminal? That's actually your fault. You and your TiVos and your hulu.com's, and your progressive insistance to tune out traditional advertising. That's ok, I understand. I'm a consumer just like you and I can't name 3 of the possibly 50 or so ads that ran during "American Morning" while I was getting ready to go to work today. Except that Wolf Blitzer is still on tv. I got that message.

So one thing I'm looking into for next year is some environmental advertsing. There are some companys out there doing some really creative things that make you stop and look and give you a little different experience. One thing media companys have been pitching me on is bus stop ads. Interesting thought so I looked into what some other brands have done. Ikea changed a whole bus stop into an Ikea-inspired living room and Adidas turned one into the Ajax soccer team's locker room complete with brick facade and hanging jerseys. So my question to you is, "is this cool?" Would you rather see this than a print ad? Is this more impactful than a traditional ad? Too invasive?

Bike Lane Blog Note: We're going to allow one of our newest designers to co-author from time to time on this blog. The attempt is to give you, the avid reader, a little taste of what we do behind the scenes as well as give an outlet to one of the artists we employ. While it may not be as exciting as the race results from some poorly attended mountain bike race, we'll try to do our best.

Burned you good King of the Mountain Blog!

Comments

[James Collins]

Environmental advertising is the new black! If you do it well, then you get people talking, and blogging, about it which adds to the exposure. When was the last time a new print ad got people talking?

It is a lot easier for consumers to engage with it too. The AJAX locker room is an awesome idea, getting people to identify with the big names that normally seem so distant. Feel like part of the 'team'!

The only problem is that it would reach a smaller number of people than what a nationally, or internationally, distributed magazine would.

Looking forward to hearing more of your plans!

[JM]

>>>While it may not be as exciting as the race results from some poorly attended mountain bike race, we'll try to do our best.

Ooooooo, I think the King of the Mountain blog just got served...

[FullCarbonBike]

I thought the first picture was a caption contest, how about:
"Honey, you're not going to believe what they did to this bus stop!"

[Richard Masoner]

I think some notes from a design person would be swell.

Creatively done environmental advertising certainly gets noticed. Think about the bike repair Kiosk that you guys did a little wihle back.

[3b]

Stuff like this helps:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/11/19/chainless.bicycles.ap/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

http://www.latimes.com/video/?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=3151900