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Captive Marketing

by: David Badurina

Every once in awhile a light bulb goes off in someone's head and a new marketing concept is born. One of the more recent "opportunistic" marketing methods is marketing to you when you have no choice.

Imagine yourself in a very small metal room with 10 other people. The doors close and you have no way of escaping this room for a minute or two. While locked in with these strangers you are exposed to various commercials for different products appearing on a video screen right in front of you. The doors finally open, and you are allowed to leave.

Sound like a nightmare (or Marketing Executive's dream, perhaps)? Well, it's actually reality; it's your experience if you use an elevator in any one of a few hundred buildings across the United States.

Captivate Network has installed over 3,000 flat-panel video monitors in elevators across the country. Business professionals use these elevators every day and while in that big metal box with nothing to do, a video screen flashes to life and sales pitches fill the room. After all, what are they going to do? Haul up 60 flights of stairs? Likely not.

This mix of "marketing through a necessity" isn't restricted to affluent business-people inside of office towers, however. The television network Comedy Central has placed over 500 advertisements in bar bathrooms in order to promote one of their new shows. Talk about a captive audience! When nature calls, advertisers listen ...

Advertising above urinals might be a rare occurrence, but the trend of advertising and transportation is becoming more evident and technology is playing an ever-increasing role. If you've ever been on a subway or seen a bus, you've no doubt seen a billboard as well. Cars are often plastered with graphics for any given local company or even a simple bumper sticker with a website. And now, in over 400 taxicabs in New York City, the passengers are treated to a video monitor as the meter runs and they are transported to their destination.

Does the concept of captive marketing frustrate you almost as much as sinking a little white golf-ball into a tiny hole 400 yards away? Then you should avoid the nearly 25,000 golf carts across the United States outfitted with video monitors touting all sorts of products to help increase your frustration and mock your futility ENHANCE your game.

So how do you escape all of this advertising if you just can't take it? Next time you're golfing, just walk. Take the stairs instead of the elevator or ride a bike instead of taking a cab.

And if you're in a bar at 1:00AM and you've got to go?

Well, they pretty much got you on that one!

�2005 ViralMarketingTool.com

About the author:
David Badurina is President of and the creator of VMT Viral Marketing Software. VMT is being used by more than 20,000 people in over 160 countries and is the premier Relationship-Building Viral Marketing Tool available online.

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