October 10th, 2002

Advertisers Hope Fragrant Posters Are Nothing to Sniff At --- Firms Target U.K. Consumers With Ads That Sing and Spray; A Whiff of Head & Shoulders

By Erin White
Wall Street Journal

The United Kingdom has long been home to zany advertising ideas. The
latest one to gain traction here: Advertising posters that smell, sing or talk.

Procter & Gamble Co. is running an ad campaign for a new Head & Shoulders
shampoo using fragrant-emitting ads on bus-stop shelters. EMI Group PLC’s Virgin
Records tested a bus-shelter ad that plays music. A recent ad for an energy-drink
called Purdey’s played "chilled out" wind-chime tunes at a bus stop.

"It’s an escalating war of trying to be noticed," says Rita Clifton,
chairman of Interbrand, a brand consulting firm owned by Omnicom Group Inc.
"There’s a growing desire, that in some cases verges on desperation, to
break through."

The risk is that advertisers irritate consumers who are already sick of getting
bombarded with ads. "People don’t like something shouting at them in an
outdoor environment," says Tom Goddard, chief executive of Viacom Outdoor
International. Viacom Inc.’s European outdoor business, for instance, tested
some giant TV screens that played commercials in train stations a few years
ago and people didn’t like it.

Partly to address that concern, some of the new poster sounds and smells are
voluntary: They work only if consumers press a button. But that carries a risk
as well.

"I didn’t really notice it," said Aydin Ahmet, a 34-year-old laborer,
standing next to a Procter & Gamble ad at a bus shelter in London. The fragrance
dispenser "looks like a security lock."

Procter & Gamble’s new antidandruff shampoo, Head & Shoulders Citrus
Fresh, smells like citrus fruit and aims to get more teenage and women users.
The posters, created by Publicis’s Saatchi & Saatchi, were installed here
this week. The ad shows a happy, young woman with the wind in her hair and invites
customers to "Press here" to dispense the mist. At the bottom of the
ad, a message says: "Experience the scent of new citrus fresh."

Janice Gittens, a 42-year-old Londoner who works for a charity, found the dispenser
off-putting. "I don’t think you need it. The picture by itself is fine,"
she said, adding that she could guess what it would smell like by seeing the
citrus on the ad. She did test it several times but couldn’t get a good whiff
because the wind blew away the spray.

JCDecaux SA is peddling a sound-emitting poster called "Jukebox"
that basically is a mini-stereo system inside an ad display. In a one-day trial
in a London bus shelter in August with Virgin Records, JCDecaux installed a
Jukebox with an album of pop favorites played at a concert celebrating the 50-year
anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign. A touch-pad let people select songs.
Some of the possibilities: Ozzy Osbourne’s performance of "Paranoid"
and Elton John’s "I Want Love."

Advertisers can program the system to play anything, and they can use a touch-pad
or a timer to trigger it. No advertiser has signed up yet, but JCDecaux says
it’s received a lot of interest. Part of the hurdle: JCDecaux U.K. charges the
equivalent of about $326 per poster site for a regular two-week ad campaign,
but roughly $1,554 per poster site for two weeks of music.

Marketers who have tried some of the newest interactive ad devices say they’ve
been encouraged. Purdey’s, a soft-drink marketer, launched its wind-chime bus-shelter
music ad in December in Manchester, and later rolled it out to several other
U.K. cities in the summer. During the morning, a track played birds singing
over the sound of wind-chimes. At night, owl hoots wafted over the chimes. Katie
Rawll, a spokeswoman for Purdey’s, says nobody complained.

Still, not everybody likes the trend. "Forced watching and forced listening
is an increasingly popular strategy," says Gary Ruskin, executive director
at Commercial Alert, a nonprofit group founded by consumer activist Ralph Nader.
He dismisses the idea that some of the new innovations are entirely voluntary,
particularly for students at bus stations trying to catch up on homework, or
other people trying to read a newspaper.

A P&G poster erected in London this week prompted one consumer to take
action. Andrea Shelford, a 35-year old law-firm receptionist, says the ad reminded
her to make an appointment to treat dry scalp.

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