There's one sure way to get someone to look at a poster at a bus or transit shelter, but few people seem to have thought to do it. Put a mirror on the poster.
That's the idea M&C Saatchi Melbourne came up with for a campaign for the Australia Post, that nation's postal service, and its personalized stamp service, which allows users to upload images and create stamps.
The ads are simple bus shelter posters that look like the corner of a huge piece of mail. It's the stamp corner, actually, and there's the outline of a stamp, with the fringed white edges. But in the center is a mirror. So the person looking into the mirror sees what he or she would look like on a stamp.
"The poster, quite literally, brought the product to life," says Tina Choong, group account director at M&C Saatchi Melbourne. "No other medium--television, press, magazine, digital, radio, you name it--would have demonstrated the product benefit more clearly."
Choong says bus shelters were chosen because Australia Post wanted to reach busy office workers who have good intentions of sending cards and letters to friends but simply don’t have the time to leave the office to buy a card or stamp.
With the Personalised Post product, as it’s called, customers can have their personalized stamps sent to their home or office.
"The bus shelter posters target them when they are commuting to and from work, and also provide an interactive dimension," Choong says.
The posters were up for two weeks at the end of last year in 90 different locations around Brisbane, the country’s third-most-populated city.
