Brand Trains

[Lynne Murphy]

Barry said:

>      From the VILLAGE VOICE, 29 August 2000, pg. 28, col. 1:
>
>      When a company swallows halves of subway cars and plasters them
>with identical ads, the biz calls these "brand trains."  Tristate
>tech start-ups shell out $150,000 apiece for monthly placement in a
>single car on 10 percent of the city's fleet.
>
>     That seems expensive to me.  You have to sell a lot of
>"Fruitopia" (one campaign that ran in the subway) to cover it.


No, you just have to sell a lot of Coca-Cola, since they own
Fruitopia.  And since they already sell a lot of Coke, they can
afford ridiculous campaigns for their smaller brands.

Incidentally, Coke was sued by a group of high school students who
had come up with the ideas behind Fruitopia (including the name) in
some sort of teen enterprise class (or camp or something) that was
peopled with Coke reps.  I think the kids won.


--
Dr M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH UK
phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax    +44-(0)1273-671320