Slashdot Mirror


Animated Ads in a Subway Near You

prostoalex writes "A company called Sub Media claims a successful launch of motion-picture ads in New York subway. The ad agency, created by a PhD in Astrophysics, prints ads on Kodak transparencies, so that when the train speeds up, the resulting images create a full-blown motion picture. The first ever ad of this was run for Target in NY, and there is another one planned for Discovery Channel."

20 of 304 comments (clear)

  1. Danger! Danger! by swordboy · · Score: 4, Funny

    As long as they aren't pop up ads...

    --

    Life is the leading cause of death in America.
  2. Related Globe article by Greenrider · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here's a fairly recent article about this from the Boston Globe

    (Google cache link, since the original story is now archived)

  3. Discovery Channel ad is already up..... by xjerky · · Score: 5, Informative

    ....which replaced the Target ad. On the PATH train from New Jersey running between 14th and 23rd Street Stations in Manhattan, left side of tunnel.

    --
    A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board: "You know what? You're right."
    1. Re:Discovery Channel ad is already up..... by wyopittsa · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I recently saw the Discovery Channel ad on the PATH train too. The ad that was showing was for The Discovery Channel's Shark week, so it featured a shark swimming around. The first time I caught it out of the corner of my eye, it sort of startled me. I knew the train was under the river at that point, and seeing a shark made me think something might be very wrong with the subway!

  4. Phew... by bacontaco · · Score: 4, Funny

    I thought for a second they were talking about the restaurant Subway... And to think my 200-pound weigh loss diet was in jeopardy! I'd hate to see animated ads with the big old flabby Jarrod and the new, skinnier one...

  5. problem by Jonny+Ringo · · Score: 4, Funny

    This will be very confusing for the New York subway graffiti culture.

    1. Re:problem by GoRK · · Score: 4, Funny

      Coming soon to a subway near you, ANIMATED GRAFFITI!

      Apparently, the hoodlums spray paint a bunch of individual pictures right next to each other so that passengers on a train speeding by are greeted with a pleasant short film about pimping and whoring. The effect has been likened to a giant "flip book."

      ~GoRK

  6. Re:And how does this sell a product? by MisterBlister · · Score: 4, Insightful
    For a while I'm sure it will be a hit because of the novelty. People will see these for the first time and the ad will really register with them because they've never seen anything like it.

    Once every subway tunnel in the world has these though, people will just mentally filter the ads out like they do with 95% of other advertising.

  7. ObSimon&Garfunkle by Loligo · · Score: 4, Funny


    The article headline didn't go as far with it as they could have.

    "And the words of the PROFITS are written on the subway walls..."

    -l

  8. coming soon to a gangland subway line near you... by Xzisted · · Score: 4, Funny

    some hood is gonna figure out how to tag these things with porn images and give full length porn movies to subway riders.

    "Yeah Joe....we just arrested another bum for pleasuring himself on the subway. We really need to get the public works dept. down there to clean the spray paint off those ads."

    --

    Honesty may be the best policy, but apparently by elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.
  9. Re:Who looks out the window? by SirWhoopass · · Score: 5, Interesting
    True, not all the seats face the ads... however... a billboard only faces one direction of the highway. Ad costs are based (generally) on how many viewers will see the ad. An ad during the Super Bowl costs a lot. An ad in a small town newspaper costs a lot less. The fact that not every single person on the subway sees the ad isn't a big issue.

    As much as I hate the ads plastered everywhere these days, I think this isn't a half-bad idea. A lot of the people riding the subway have nothing better to do. As you note, they often "zone out". Those people will probably view the ad, especially if it's interesting (think of the possibilities of a long-running story type campaign). Here's a situation where a lot of people have nothing better to do-- as opposed to pop up ads where I'm trying to do something else but the ads interrupt me.

  10. Re:yet another reason to use a car by Skyshadow · · Score: 4, Funny
    Yea right. Any city with a subway has billboards everywhere, along with enough people & traffic to make driving a car a pain in the ass.

    That's why I close my eyes when I drive. Thank God for my Excursion and the custom rambar on the front.

    --
    Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
  11. the value of education by Ravagin · · Score: 4, Funny
    The ad agency, created by a PhD in Astrophysics

    I guess a degree is pretty powerful, if it can start its own company....

    --

    Karma: T-rexcellent.

  12. Gator by sdjunky · · Score: 4, Funny

    And in other news Gator today unveiled their newest advertisement product

    "We don't want to go into details about how it will work but I will say that customers who order our free Ray Ban sunglasses will be in the thousands and the impressions will be many"

    While many are buzzing about being able to get Free Rayban glasses the NY Transit authority is quite upset.

    "This is going to eat into our subway ad revenues. It's theft and we plan on pressing legal action"

  13. ads are everywhere by jlv · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not just on transparencies, but on Kodak transparencies . Is that a product placement right on the front of slashdot?

  14. Done long ago by sys49152 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wish I noticed this story earlier.

    For all of you New Yorkers who rode the D train from Brooklyn into Manhattan in the late 70's and early 80's, this is old hat. I don't know when they pulled the plug on this, but between Dekalb Ave. and the Manhattan Bridge some artist had done exactly this along the abonded Myrtle Ave. stop. It depicted a 1950's style rocket ship taking off and landing.

    I must have watched this a 1,000 times on way in to high school. Of course, this was art and not an ad.

  15. Not a new idea.... by Manuka · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Back in the 1980s, an artist created an installation in the New York Subway called Masstransiscope which essentially turned the subway into an unrolled and oversized zoetrope.

  16. Ray Bradbury did it as well by jmichaelg · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Years ago, Ray Bradbury came to town and talked about what he did besides write science fiction. Among his many enterprises, he consulted with Disney on their animation museum in Florida. They had a standard museum layout with kiosks showing various Disney cartoons but unfortunately, the room felt flat and uninteresting. So they called Bradbury in as part of a team to figure out how to jazz up the exhibit.

    Bradbury, et al., suggested using a material that was common years ago but may not be so common now - it was a type of reflector that showed a picture when viewed one way and another picture when viewed from a slightly different angle. You could flip back and forth by rotating the reflector. Their idea was that if you're going to have an animation museum, the museum itself should be animated. But since they were specifically aiming at kids, they set up the entry just for the kids.

    What happened depended on how tall you were. If you were an adult, you saw these static cartoon adult characters, i.e., Goofey, Donald, etc. following you along as you walked down the hall to the exhibit. But if you were a kid, or you lowered your eyes to kid-height, what you saw were an animated Huey, Dewey and Louie running in and out of the cartoon adult's legs.

  17. You are probably thinking of... by cr0sh · · Score: 5, Interesting
    ...lenticular lens plastic overlays - and yes, the stuff is still available (Home Depot has some "NASCAR branded" credit cards that animate when you tilt them). What is neat is that not only can you use the material for animation, but you can also achieve various "3D"-like effects.

    On a similar note, I recently bought a complete set of Popular Mechanics Do-it-Yourself encyclopedias (published in 1968), and one project that was detailed was a picture done in a similar manner, except instead of lenticular lens plastic being used, three pictures were used. Two of the pictures were cut into strips that were glued back-to-back and in order. Then a third picture was placed in the frame, and via grooves sawed in the top and bottom of the frame edge, the strips were placed perpendicular to the main picture. This basically allowed three different "views" in one picture frame as you looked at it from the left, the right, and "head-on". The project was described as using portraits: A left portrait, a right portrait, and a frontal face portrait.

    --
    Reason is the Path to God - Anon