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The Las Vegas Monorail embraces “advertainment”
By Rebecca Trela
Almost 150 years ago, the lush Las Vegas landscape was scouted by mapmakers and named for “the meadows,” reflecting the surrounding water and grass that was soon settled by Mormons. Even if you’ve never been to the City of Sin, you know the vista has transformed from pastoral landscape to blinking inferno. To get attention, each successive light is bigger and brighter.
That’s part of the philosophy behind the advertisements on the Las Vegas Monorail (LVM), a four-mile elevated public train where print, video and audio vie for the attention of nearly 10 million riders each year. The monorail opened in 2004, and it’s the only privately funded public transportation system in the United States. Other than farebox revenue (a whopping $5 per ride, unless you buy a pass), cash flow comes from advertising dollars. And almost everything—from the overhead announcements to the LVM operations building—is for sale.
Patrick Pharris, president of Promethean Partners and formerly the exclusive advertising broker for the entire system, developed a program built around the concept of “immersive advertising.” Las Vegas is a city of glitz and noise unlike any other, he says, and extra dazzle is necessary to capture the consumer’s attention.
He has six minutes. During the average train wait, viewers are surrounded by a multimedia advertising campaign, displaying a message from a single advertiser that touches a number of different senses. “The trouble with public transit is that it’s not cool,” he says. The company was looking for a solution so intriguing that riders would tell their friends about it.
“We give advertisers the opportunity to ‘own’ the five senses. We put people in the ‘experience’ of the brand,” he says, which begins with an extra-thick card stock ticket imaged with an ad. “They have to look at the ad, because it’s positioned upright when they insert the ticket in the turnstile.” Advertising festoons the walls, ceilings and floors of the trains and the stations. A company can purchase a monopoly on an entire station (like the Sprint/Nextel station at the convention center, where riders can try out Sprint handsets in the Sprint lounge), or an entire train, which is wrapped in large-format printed vinyl and given a themed interior.
“I started comparing the monorail and total brand immersion to other big media buys—the Superbowl, Times Square, etc. The problem is that there are 200 billboards in Times Square, and the consumer just moves on. There’s no opportunity to walk into the billboard. You can’t look at an Apple ad and then put on an iPod.” To make a connection with a consumer, Pharris says, the key is to employ print and other technologies together with a uniform message.
He gets his “gee whiz” moment from riders through a partnership with Monster Media, Orlando, Fla., a digital media company with the exclusive rights to some very “cool” interactive technology. The company creates interactive ads, GroundFX, that are projected on the monorail platforms. When infrared cameras sense a person crossing the ad, it responds—a school of fish scatters, for example. (Watch a video of this technology at www.printsolutionsmag.com/sepvideo.asx.) The idea is to draw consumers into a participatory experience with the brand.
“It creates a lot of smiles and conversation,” says CEO Chris Beauchamp. “Our product is fun. People don’t look at it and say, ‘Oh, jeez, another ad.’ Or worse, not look at it.” The ads are wireless, which enables the company to change the display remotely, but also creates new ad opportunities. “You walk within 40 feet of the ad, which is selling a taco,” Beauchamp says. “If you have a Bluetooth-enabled phone, you’ll get a text message: ‘Do you want a free taco from this company?’ If you press yes, your phone gets an instant coupon and you’re on your way.”
Multiple people can interact with the ad simultaneously, he says, and they are tracked by the infrared. “The camera sees you like the alien in Predator,” says Beauchamp. The company’s other popular technology, ScreenFX, uses LCDs to capture the image of passers-by and insert their faces in the advertisement. “Obviously that stops most people in their tracks.” Presto, interactive ads—you can see them in 20 Las Vegas casinos, McCarran Airport, the convention center and on the monorail system.
Although Pharris has authored an investment-level advertising study and developed a comprehensive, multi-million dollar advertising program, he still runs into walls while prospecting. Early on in the monorail planning, he says, he was stuck in the “labyrinth” of gatekeepers at General Motors, now an advertiser.
“I pitched them for three and a half years,” he says. “I just couldn’t get through.” Finally, the vice chairman of the board of directors phoned him. “He said, ‘I want to apologize on behalf of GM. An idea this good shouldn’t have taken this long to get to my office.’” Pharris was excited, he says, but chalks his success up to sheer persistence. “If you’re a deal junkie, it’s not just the money. The satisfaction comes from the pursuit and landing of one of the world’s largest companies.”
For more information, visit www.lvmonorail.com.
Rebecca Trela is assistant editor at Print Solutions magazine. Email comments to rtrela@PSDA.org.