Ads hit phone users where they live

Ads hit phone users where they live

	Published : Thu, 31 May 2007 22:25 By : Agencies Print this Story

NEW YORK (AP) - Richard Armstrong considered the ad that covered most of a building on the Lower East Side. '6th FLOOR WALK-UP, YOU RULE,' it said, with an arrow pointing at the apartment indicated. '1st FLOOR LIQUOR STORE, YOU RULE TOO.'

'I don't know what it means,' he said. 'No clue.'

The ad, one of 350 in New York City and northern New Jersey, is part of a new Virgin Mobile campaign that courts customers with tongue-in-cheek celebrations of their geographical and subcultural identities.

There's 'CHINATOWN, YOU RULE,''HARLEM, YOU RULE,''CAR SERVICE DRIVERS, YOU RULE,' and even '11TH STREET BETWEEN 5TH AND 6TH, YOU RULE.'

The campaign takes the concept of specialized, in-your-face advertising to new levels in a city where people are bombarded with ads at every location.

Howard Handler, chief marketing officer for Virgin Mobile USA, said the 350 billboards, bus shelter and phone kiosk ads and 'wallscapes' went up last week and are precursors to a national campaign that will start in July. The campaign was created by the Durham, N.C.-based ad agency McKinney.

Handler wouldn't divulge what the non-New York ads will say. NASCAR DAD, YOU RULE? McMANSION OWNER, YOU RULE?

'No matter where we choose to communicate, we are going to try to nail that,' he promised.

In New York, eye-level ads like those on bus shelters include text that explains why the particular community 'rules.'

The Chinatown one touts the street vendors' fake designer handbags. 'Why spend a ton of money on one really expensive purse you'll have to carry around for years when, for the same price, you can have 45 purses and rock a different one every day of the week?' it asks.

Virgin Mobile USA has 4.8 million customers, between 2 percent and 3 percent of the wireless market, and targets 18- to 34-year-olds with its prepaid service plans, Handler said.

Alice Cuneo, who covers the cell phone industry for Advertising Age, said the new campaign works because, 'In a sense, you rule. You have a prepaid plan and you are in charge of it.'

The ad celebrating Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood invokes the stereotype of the self-involved 'Chelsea boy,' a gay man who's at the gym when he's not at the latest hot club.

'Some might say you are vain, but those people are just old, wrinkled and out of shape,' it reads.

Most people walked past the ad on a pay phone Tuesday without stopping.

But Paul Bacon, 45, a theatrical technical director who lives in the neighborhood, said he objected to the ad so strongly he had already called Virgin and asked to switch to another provider.

'I wanted to take a Sharpie out and deface it,' he said. 'I'm sending them a letter about how divisive this can be. I would not call myself old, wrinkled and out of shape.'