It seemed like such a smart idea: A 60-foot ad leading onto the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge going into New York.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey thought so. So did Geico, whose ad was to be the first in the space.
Jack Alter didn't think it was a very good idea at all. He thought it was really a bad idea, and as mayor of Fort Lee, the small New Jersey town that looks over the bridge, he felt he ought to have a say in the matter.
He did, and he's gotten his way. The PA, which operates the bridge, has backed off the plan, this week canceling the ad just as it was about to go up.
The plan was for a multi-story "Drive Safe” sign to be placed this month at the Fort Lee toll plaza with an image of the gecko made famous in the Geico ads. It was part of a larger two-year, $3.2 million ad deal the insurance company and the PA signed in December.
“They never even consulted us," says Alter. "I happened to find out about it through the media. I let them know that we were not amused and that, in essence, they’d sold a part of the town.”
Thousands of the affluent town’s 40,000 residents live within view of the bridge, many in high-rises that line the Palisades overlooking the Hudson River.
“We could hang up signs all over the place, but we don’t think sticking them in the face of our residents was a particularly good idea,” says Alter.
Geico accepted the decision, not wanting to be caught in a feud that would blow up in the media and end up hurting more than helping its well-honed image.
Still, it’s not hard to see why any advertiser would be attracted to a presence on the famous bridge. About 300,000 people make the trek across the bridge into Manhattan each day, many of them top executives living in Fort Lee and other affluent towns in northern Bergen County. Any ad of the scope the PA had in mind would create lots of talk.
But Alter says the matter was resolved amicably.
“I asked the Port Authority that we don’t have a repeat, and they assured me we would not,” he says. “The example I used, and some say it’s sarcastic, is what could you get for a sign hung on the Statue of Liberty?”
