Public Bathroom Guerilla Marketing!

Now that I work in a public institution and not a private company, I've been going to the bathroom a lot in mass public bathrooms; row after row of stalls, very high-traffic, and considered to be dirty or unclean.

While some Bathrooms can be downright entertaining with the stuff written on the walls or their general design, (if you don't know what I mean by design, check out this video I took of a bathroom in a Greencastle, IN bowling alley, link) the University of Colorado Boulder's bathrooms are particularly bland because the graffiti is constantly painted over and the stalls are organized as if it were a public rest stop. After several visits I noticed an odd sort of unwritten law in the bathroom stalls. Many people will grab one of the free publications available and bring it into the bathroom with them to help pass the time.  Reading while doing business is multitasking and is a good use of time that would otherwise be...FLUSHED AWAY (pun intended)!

Every once in a while some lazy patron of the porcelain pot will drop the paper on the floor and leave it there for the janitorial staff to clean up.  In the meantime though it is down there for all to see and I have conjectured a law of the personal interaction in such circumstances.

This law, which I will arbitrarily name "Cheeseman's Law of Bathroom Floor Literary Interaction" is stated as follows:  

If a bathroom stall’s walls are clean of literature (graffiti) and a literary work (be it an newspaper, flier, pamphlet, advertisement, etc.) is present on the floor within the stall, then the patron's attention will be drawn to the work and, considering the stigma of public bathrooms being unhygienic, the patron will not be inclined to turn to another page in the work, close the work or move the work from the stall floor and thus will likely view or read the work as it is an anomaly in an otherwise uninteresting bathroom stall.

Image Source: 'shockingbird' on Fickr

This is an advertisers DREAM!  Captive, exclusive, and likely bored audience who will likely view/read the literature for a decent amount of time!

Advertisers could write up a fake newspaper article, print out a flier, or unfold a pamphlet and shove it under the door of the stall and it will remain there until the janitors clean them out! With respect to the campus atmosphere, it seems like this would be a better alternative to most campus-bound advertising.

A tac-board column in the middle of campus is only glanced at as students walk past and chalking and side-walk fliers are barely noticed during high-traffic times and at the least are ignored as they are trampled, rained upon, and vandalized.  The bathroom is a cave of blandness and it is human nature to be curious; student minds are itching to get away from the idea of studying and if there's something in the bathroom to draw their attention, they will most likely give it some attention!

Though some of the environmental hazards are still present (getting trampled, rained on...etc...), the piece will not likely be vandalized or removed as the stigma of the bathroom floor is well circulated and respected. There are nuances though.  I'm sure Hostess would not want to be advertising Ho-Ho's in an environment where the patron may be suffering from indigestion, but Pepto Bismol would likely see a dramatic increase in sales if every patron who had to leave an important meeting due to a stomach bug looked down to see the cure staring them in the face and available at a nearby convenience store!

Best of all, it's relatively cheap to do and easy to organize via a 3rd party to keep your hands clean (no pun intended) of any lawsuits concerning littering or soliciting on private property. Selection of targets is also essential.

You would want to balance high-traffic with low-frequency-maintenance as you want to maximize the number of people who gaze down at your propaganda while sitting on the John while ensuring that it is not cleaned out too early or is soiled until it is illegible.

Also, the context of the location could have a significant role in what is advertised where!

Rosetta Stone could consider dropping leaflets in the international travel terminals in airports listing all the ways to say "Can you pass me some TP?  I'm out over here!"; big-chain book stores may want to slip fawning reviews of under performing new releases in the stalls of the bathroom next to the espresso bar; toilet paper companies could seek out places with the cheapest TP and slip adds or coupons under the door talking about their new quilted super-plush rolls with aloe and rump-wax; politicians can slip neutral political ads of their opponent onto the scummy floors in public rest stops and DMV bathrooms as a sort of associative psychological warfare; the possibilities are endless and the audience is captive! I will arbitrarily declare that I am the first to come up with this tactic (and I bet I am considering how crazy and idea it seems pragmatically) and that it will be a major form of advertising by 2013 (if the end of the world comes like the Mayans predict who's to say I was wrong?).

Next time you're at the airport, school library, or public bathroom of choice, look down and soon you will see advertisers buying for your attention in the metal confines of the bathroom stall!  Read on patrons of the stalls! READ ON!  ALL HAIL CAPITALISM!