How effective are tube adverts? Very is the answer, otherwise people wouldn’t advertise there. Look closely at a tube and you’ll see an advert loaded with calls to action that you’re supposed to react to when you get above ground. So, not only do adverts need to be powerful, they need to be memorable enough that you remember them later. Seriously, I love adverts. And advertising. I read David Ogilvy’s book on advertising earlier this year and loved it so much that I immediately read it again. I love how adverts are created to emotionally engage with the audience. More often than not, you’ll see me on the tube, consuming adverts, looking at the messaging, figuring out the demograph, and the likely ROI from the campaign. But with tube adverts, there’s a general theme and trend – the adverts are very much B2C. So, just imagine my intrigue when I saw the following advert:

Isn’t it beautiful? It’s so simple and yet so powerful. It’s a Ronseal ad – it does exactly what it says on the tin. Where could I possibly go to find a creative agency in London. I know… Creativeagencylondon.com! As a marketer (and therefore, the target market) it leaves me so intrigued. Normally agencies will enter my world with a creds presentation or cold call which is all well and good but it’s the same as what everyone else is doing. Now this, well not only did I take this picture but I went to the website as soon as I could get a signal. Now, naturally, the URL is just a landing page which helps the organisation track the number of people coming to the URL from the Tube, and the organisation will be running a limited number of ads, so they’ll have a better idea of where their targets are commuting from/to.

But what’s the ROI on this? Well tube adverts are not cheap however a bit more investigation led me to discover that the agency in question (Clinic) do a lot of work for CBS (who run tube advertising), so there may have been a bit of discounting involved. Chances are, this advert is going to pass a lot of people by as it’s not designed for consumers and is probably going to get a lot more shrugs from commuters, confused as to why they’ve wasted so much space. I think that there will be a lot of marketers in London who will follow up on the advert, more out of curiosity than anything else. Get them registered and engaged and the agency will only need a couple of projects to make this worthwhile.

I really find it refreshing that in an age of digital display advertising that what would be considered a tech savvy advertising agency would utilise the traditional medium of in effect, a poster on the wall to sell their services.