Free Ridin'
WMATA, the Washington, D.C. metro authority, will be offering free rideson the morning of December 16, 2004, courtesy of ING Direct. Riders entering the system between 5 and 9:30 a.m. will ride for free, without farecards or SmartTrip cards. Metrouser over at Oh Metro! seems distraught by this:
A commercial company (I'm certainly not going to give them free publicity) is going to give all subway (but not bus) riders a free ride during the morning rush on December 16, in return for Metro turning the system orange, the color of the company....Coming next from Metro - brothels at stations (but not at bus stops), liquor stores on every platform (but not at bus stops) and strippers (male and female) to entertain subway riders who have to wait more than ten minutes for their train (bus riders will just have to think dirty thoughts to entertain themselves).
While Metrouser is mostly upset by the fact that its only Metro riders - not bus riders - getting in on the promotion, rather than the promotion as a whole, I'd like to point out the promotion itself isn't without precedence. BART did a
similar co-promotion with ING last year, which must have worked exceptionally well, considering that ING is now offering free riders to a much larger audience. According to
NBC4, ING will be paying about $600,000 for that morning's commute.
As for not paying for free bus rides, too, I can understand ING's perspective on that. Ignoring the demographics of bus riders -- who, even in middle-class bus-riding D.C., tend to be poorer and less likely to open an online savings account -- it's much harder to blanket a bus system with advertising than to blanket the metro system. With Metrorail, there are 84 stations and a finite number of trains. It's easy to turn the system "orange". Metrobus has 12,435 bus stops and 2,038 bus shelters...and 1,460 buses. There's no way ING could cover the entire Metrobus system to make their advertising worthwhile. It's just not feasible.
Post Author:
amg | 4:13 PM |
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As anyone considered that ING's market more closely matches Metro riders, rather than the maligned bus passengers? Are we suggesting that it isn't entitled to spend its advertising budget where it can get the greatest result? How is this different from choosing which TV shows to place your ads?
uhm, bus rides are also free, go read the article on the wmata site.
Jeff --
You are correct, although the decision to let bus riders ride free, also, was made after our post.
Thanks.
