Mike sends along the following scan a direct mail advertisement from Denver’s Regional Transportation Authority. You can see the full narrative after the jump:
Apparently the comic was sent to people throughout the Denver region with a couple of one way vouchers and a survey.
Is it attention-grabbing and untraditional? Most definitely. Is it effective advertising? I’m not so sure.
I have a hard time believing that such an ad could persuade people to take public transit who don’t already. (Camp notwithstanding, I also have some issues with the gender issues and stereotypes the comic suggests.)
On the flip side, I love the tag at the end – watch for more exciting adventures coming soon in your email!
Because the ad is just so bizarre, I kind of want to know what those “exciting adventures” are. In fact, I really want to know. You probably do too. It creates anticipation. You read that and you immediately want to know when you’re going to see those new adventures – you want to know just how far RTD is going to take this.
The fact that I’ll have to experience those exciting adventures by email is, frankly, a bit of a let-down. Compared to a direct-mail comic book, continuing my adventure by email seems chintzy. I understand it, however, from a cost-perspective and am willing to forgive it.
Imagine, however, if those two free one way vouchers led to a legitimate exciting adventure. Imagine if those vouchers were specific to a route on a specific day and at a specific time. And imagine if those vouchers promised an exciting adventure if you dared use those vouchers.
Admit it: You’d want to see what adventures awaited, wouldn’t you?
I would.
2 Comments
Really…? I don’t think I wanna know how much time and resources they spent on this piece of “advertising”…
Overall I’d give it “two thumbs up” for a rollicking, campy, enjoyable comic strip.
It’d be great to find out what the “uptick” in ridership was on route 228 and if they were tracking closely the use of these “coupons.” (where they got on, etc) The ROI information would be critical to know.
I personally liked the campiness. I do hear what “monorail” is saying as RTD probably used an outside agency to come up with that. And I hope a ton of internal hours weren’t used to make a bureaucracy actually have the guts to run an ad like that!