Now What? Ads at the Gas Pump?
More about advertising from BIG Mike McDaniel

We are bombarded with thousands of advertising messages
each day. Some are in the most unlikely places; above
the urinals in public toilets, painted on the inside
walls of parking garages and now, on the gas pump
handle!

It's bad enough most of us have to pump our own gas.
Long gone are the days when the smiling guy in the
mechanic's hat checked the oil and cleaned the
windshield while another guy pumped gas in the tank at
a whopping 24 cents a gallon! Now, we do the pumping,
and in many states, we have to stand there and hold on
to the pump, because the auto-fill mechanism has been
outlawed.

So what do you do while you stand there? You read an ad
on top of the pump, hawking a special inside the store.
This ad is especially important since so many stations
offer pay at the pump. Without seeing the ad, you may
not venture into the store to pick up the high profit
items. Some more sophisticated stations have small TV
screens next to the credit card slot that present a
solid stream of color commercials, some local, with the
speaker blaring in your ear.

But the biggest jump in creative advertising is the
pump handle. When filling the tank, you have to look at
your hand holding the nozzle. And there, on the top, is
a pitch for cell phone minutes or a tasty photo of a
sandwich inside.

Radio used to be the only non-intrusive advertising
medium. This means that you could get the commercials
while you did something else as opposed to the
newspaper that you had to look at to read and see the
ads or TV that required you to sit and watch. But gas
pump nozzles join radio because you are stuck at the
pump. You have to look at the nozzle. The ad becomes
non-intrusive. A time passer. Something to do while you
wait. Like reading the place mat full of ads in a
restaurant while you wait for your order.

There are national and regional gas pump ad agencies
that seek advertisers guaranteeing so many pumps per
market. They, in turn, pay the gas station or
convenience store a percentage of the revenue.

What can you do with your business to put your message
where people can, and must, see it? Are you doing
everything you can at your business to exploit empty
space to make a sales point?

Grocery stores post their newspaper ads at the door.
Many offer piles of flyers in case you left your
coupons at home.

Big box stores have discovered the joy of covering a
colorful ad with plastic and taping it to the floor so
you have to walk on it, and they know you aren't going
to step on something unless you know it's safe to do
so. Gothca!

Discuss unique adverting possibilities with associates,
or people in your same business in other markets. If
you think about it, you, too, can come up with
something as good at a gas nozzle ad.


(c)2005 BIG Mike McDaniel, All Rights Reserved
http://BIGIdeasGroup.com
BIG Mike is a Business Consultant and Professional
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