Ever since I moved State side I have been bombarded with more advertising than you could shake a stick at. My mailbox is constantly full of advertisement junk mail every day (I've stopped saving the junk mail for recycling because I just can't keep up with the volume that keeps appearing in my mailbox). I cancelled my cable subscription after a month here because I just couldn't properly watch anything on tv with the constant adverts popping up every 5 minutes during a show (and in between and before opening and closing credits). Almost every place I've ever bought anything from where I've had the misfortune of giving my contact details to have been sending me useless personal adverts in both mail and email form. Even my bank which already has my business keeps sending me adverts disguised as possible monthly statements trying to sell me their damn credit card (in which they already denied me for!) and other additional services. Stores will usually ask for your area code at the checkout when you're paying for stuff so they know what areas are best to target their adverts (though they say its for "statistics gathering"). And so on and so on ad infinitum.
It truly is a shining example of the cogs of a great Capitalist society grinding away.
Out of all this blanket advertising, I just noticed recently that the one place where I expect to see adverts is usually quite bare (certainly in the areas I frequent). And that is at the bus stops. There could be two reasons for this. One being, bus stops around here are usually just a single bus stop sign rather than a proper bus stop with bus shelter (it's L.A., we don't need bus shelters, it rains 1 week out of the year here). So there is no opportunity to put a bus shelter advert up. And two, the powers that be might figure since public transport is so shit here and hardly anyone uses it (except for the poor, the weirdos and the foreigners who don't own cars) its not worth their time advertising there.
[Edit: I just went for a walk downtown today and noticed that there is indeed bus shelters with adverts galore on them. It must just be the bus stops outside of the downtown area that are deemed none bus shelter and thus non advert worthy. Just goes to show how much I venture downtown.]
So, in order to fill this advertising gap that I've been missing out on, here are a bunch of very clever bus stop adverts from around the world.
This bus stop advert for domestic violence awareness from Amnesty International has an eye tracking camera embedded in it. When someone looks at it, the image changes from a man beating a woman to a picture of a supposedly happy couple with the caption "It Happens When Nobody Is Looking".
Fitness First in Rotterdam put up a bus stop advert to try to get people to exercise more by showing their weight on the advertising billboard. The seat they were sitting on was actually a set of scales. I believe there was a significant increase in gym memberships around that time.
This bus stop advert for Fish Franke is actually a live aquarium with real fish.
An advert for saving energy.
Err... I think this one was for a soul or funk radio station or something along those lines.
This one is for a jeans company getting you to expose your bum in order to prove a point.
... And a few more, just because I thought they were amusing more so than clever.
Up!
Wonderbra.
