In its purest form, ambient advertising is essentially the placement of ads in unusual, high traffic places. These ads can range from large scale placements on elevator doors to full, graphic wraps on city busses and enormous, artistic installations in interesting places.
A form of guerilla marketing, this medium has taken on a new life outside of simple, non-traditional advertising in the form of giant coffee cups spilling over near Madison Square Garden in NYC and tiny cars secured with enormous bicycle locks in downtown Toronto. Even McDonald’s has entered the game lighting the Chicago area night sky with their world-famous fries.
What this medium does is give agencies large and small just one more way to stretch our creative muscles. Ambient advertising has given us license to explore the deepest reaches of our imaginations and implement creative that’s sure to be seen and create buzz at the same time – Whether it’s in a bathroom stall, embedded in the bar at your favorite pub or literally spilling onto a crowded street.
The best part of ambient advertising? It doesn’t take a huge budget to make an impact. Most major installations are designed for short periods of time and, since ambient isn’t limited to just large-scale attention grabbers, essentially if you can dream it, you can do it.
Want to use ambient advertising to market your new microbrew on a limited budget? Why not affix your logo to pool cues that you can give to bars with billiard tables? With ambient advertising, the options are endless. Get creative, think outside the box. More often than not, the payoff will be more than worth it.
