You might call it the trickle-down theory of advertising, but TBS has placed talking posters in 500 men's restrooms in bars nationwide to promote the TV station's college football coverage.
I was standing in front of the urinal when a slightly scratchy voice suddenly drifted out of the obviously empty toilet stall in the john. The voice was hard to understand, but I did catch something about "standing upright to go to the bathroom" and "you, my friend."
You, my friend?
Some of the people I talked to about the ad thought the whole thing was a hoot, but not everybody shares that opinion. Sports Illustrated, for example, had a recent blurb about the TBS ad campaign under the heading, "This week's sign of the apocalypse."
Personally, I was creeped out by a disembodied man's voice talking to me as if the guy were a close associate - or a used car salesman.
Add toilet humor to the experience, and I was left wondering exactly what was going on here. So I called TBS in Atlanta to find out. Atlanta and Seattle are two of 12 cities targeted in the campaign.
After getting passed around to various divisions at the cable giant and waiting for a return call, I finally connected with Jeff Gregor, senior vice president of sports marketing and programming for both TBS and TNT.
Obviously calling on a cell phone from a bar after work (presumably one that has the talking ads), Gregor spoke about captive audiences and demographics. "Our awareness numbers are doing quite well," he said of the prime sports-watching demographic of 18- to 49-year-old males.
Gregor also pointed out that advertisements have been appearing above urinals and in bathrooms at bars and restaurants for quite some time.
But a talking ad?
"I like to think it's a new idea," Gregor said. Actually, it's not, but more about that later. The football-ad approach is certainly novel, in any case.
"We wanted to add some humor," he said of an in-house "tongue-in-cheek" campaign that was farmed out to Atlanta-based Zoom Media for implementation.
Actually, the ad is kind of funny if you listen to the whole thing, as I did several times while doing research for this ground-breaking neighborhood story.
The ad starts out by saying there are two prerequisites for being a man. "One of them is the ability to stand upright while going to the bathroom. You, my friend, don't have to worry about the first prerequisite," the ad continues.
The second prerequisite is watching as much college football as "humanly possible," an assertion that miraculously segues into information about TBS's college football coverage.
As far as Gregor's concerned, TBS is not pushing the envelope by using ads that start talking to you in the john. It's also not an invasion of privacy, and since there are already ads in restrooms, a talking one isn't such a big deal, according to the marketing exec. "We're just taking it up to another level."
Indeed, some people appreciate the effort.
Tim Croft, a longtime Mecca bartender, got a kick out the ad. "It's hilarious," he grinned. "I just think it's a clever ad." And he doesn't think a talking ad in the boy's room is going too far. "Oh, no. It's easier to listen to than read," he said.
Others are less than enthusiastic. "I hate it," said another Mecca staffer who didn't want his name used.
Matt-E - a bar manager at a hot-spot club in South Seattle - was sitting on the toilet in the Mecca when he first experienced the ad. "I thought I was going crazy," he said. Matt-E added that he had a hard time understanding the words, probably because he had his back to the poster. The preferred placement is above urinals, according to TBS.
Matt-E also said he's a sports fan and doesn't have a problem with regular ads in the johns at bars. A talking ad is different. "The last thing I expect is to be bombarded by a captive mentality while I'm doing my business," he complained.
A block and half away on Mercer Street, Ozzie's karaoke joint has one of the talking ads above the urinal. But the ad was apparently sabotaged almost immediately, and nobody in the place was aware it talked.
They might not have cared, according to bartender Donald Speckhals. Ozzie's had another talking ad in the men's room around nine months ago, he said. That one was an ad for Futurama, an animated show on the Fox Network. The speaker was a robot character named Bender, who talked about well ... the listeners' equipment, Speckhals said.
Listening to the ad even became a social event. "Guys would go pee together, like girls," he said. "It was the talk of the bar for three days." By the time the fourth day rolled around, though, the talking ad had been broken by people who had tried to steal it, Speckhals said.
The TBS ad at the Mecca didn't last much longer. It was vandalized after a week, when the speaker was torn out by someone who obviously didn't appreciate promotion in the potty. Bartender Croft was steamed by the development. "Those bastards!" he commented in South Park-speak.
Chances are that talking ads in bathrooms are here to stay, but I wondered about potty parity. After all, a lot of women are football fans, too. Not to worry, according to Gregor at TBS. "As soon as we look at the target audience," he said, "that will be the next thing."
