Text 10 outdoor advertising - a breath of fresh air

The world of outdoor advertising billboards, transport and “street furniture” ( things like bus shelters and public toilets) is worth about $18 billion a year, just 6% of all the world’s spending on advertising. But it is one of the fastest-growing segments, having doubled its market share in recent years.

Outdoor advertising’s appeal is growing as TV and print are losing theirs. The soaring costs of TV are prompting clients to consider alternatives. Dennis Sullivan, boss of Portland Group, a media buyer, calls outdoor advertising the last true mass-market medium. It is also cheap. In Britain, a 30-second prime-time TV slot costs over 60,000pounds ($100,000); placing an ad on a bus shelter for two weeks works out at about 90 pounds.

Adding to its attractions has been a revolution in the quality of outdoor displays. Famous architects such as Britain’s Norman Foster are designing arty bus shelters and kiosks with backlit displays. Backlighting, introduced in Europe by Decaux and More, and plastic poster skins have vastly improved color and contrast.

Movement is possible too. Smirnoff used new multi-image printing to make a spider, seen through a vodka bottle, appear to crawl up a man’s back. And Disney advertised its “101 Dalmatians” video on bus shelters with the sound of puppies barking.

This sort of innovation has attracted a new class of advertiser. Recent data from Concord, a poster buyer, shows that in Britain, alcohol and tobacco have been replaced by entertainment, clothing and financial services as the big outdoor advertisers, like car makers, are using it in new ways. BMW ran a “teasers” campaign in Britain exclusively on bus shelters.

Particularly attractive to the new advertisers is street furniture, the fastest growing segment of the outdoor market. It accounts for some 20% in Europe and about 5% in America.

( from the Financial Times)

TEXT 11 HOW TO SELECT THE BEST CANDIDATES – AND AVOID THE WORST

Investing thousands of pounds in the recruitment and training of each new graduate recruit may be just the beginning. Choosing the wrong candidate may leave an organisation paying for years to come.

Few companies will have escaped all of the following failures: people who panic at the first sign of stress; those with long, impressive qualifications who seem incapable of learning; hypochondriacs whose absentee record becomes astonishing; and the unstable person later discovered to be a thief or worse.

Less dramatic, but just as much a problem, is the person who simply doesn’t come up to expectations, who doesn’t quite deliver; who never becomes a high-flyer or even a steady performer; the employee with a fine future behind them.

The first point to bear in mind at the recruitment stage is that people don’t change. Intelligence levels decline modestly, but change little over their working life. The same is true of abilities, such as learning languages and handling numbers.

Most people like to think that personality can change, particularly the more negative features such as anxiety, low esteem, impulsiveness or a lack of emotional warmth. But data collected over 50 years gives a clear message: still stable after all these years. Extroverts become slightly less extroverted; the acutely shy appear a little less so, but the fundamentals remain much the same. Personal crises can affect the way we cope with things; we might take up or drop drink, drugs, religion or relaxation techniques, which can have pretty dramatic effects. Skills can be improved, and new ones introduced, but at rather different rates. People can be groomed for a job. Just as politicians are carefully repackaged through dress, hairstyle and speech specialists, so people can be sent to training courses, diplomas or experimental weekends. But there is a cost to all this which may be more than the price of the course. Better to select for what you actually see rather than attempt to change it.

( From the Financial Times)