RR Super Bowl ad

[Anonymous]

Would the railroad industry ever run an ad during the Super Bowl to promote itself? Any ideas about what it would or should look like?

[adrianspeeder]

Doubt it. What does the average joe care about trains?

Adrianspeeder

[Anonymous]

There's a reason why you never see Norfolk Southern, Boeing, and ADM commercials on regular TV. They run them on financial channels and PBS, but not regular TV. The one is for investors I guess and the other is because they sponsored a show on PBS to look good.

[tree68]

If they thought they'd get to the appropriate audience and had a product to sell to that audience, they might. Considering that they don't seem all that interested in single-car shippers (ie, a wide range of customers) anymore, I wouldn't hold my breath. They can spend less and target one-on-one the customers shipping a commodity they want to handle.

One possible exception would be if a RR was having a severe public image problem and wanted to polish it up a bit. Then you'd probably see lots of images of railroads moving things people just can't live without. Sort of like the BASF ads - you can't buy much directly from BASF, but you can buy lots of things that BASF had a part in making better (to paraphrase their ad).

[MP57313]

$2.4 million is a lot of bucks for 30 seconds. As mentioned above "big rail" is not in the retail business, so I can't imagine they'd spend the bucks. Maybe during a golf game...

[bbrant]

Also take into consideration that companies who advertise during the Super Bowl are targeting a national audience where railroad companies focus on their geographical area. And like someone else metioned, the ads on the Super Bowl are for the average joe. Railroad companies are targeted at businesses.

Would be fun to think of what the ads would be like though.

[Mookie]

Well, it isn't the Super Bowl - but an Omaha station just advertised an auction of the old Union Pacific office items coming up mid-February. Said they wouldn't offer a locomotive, but have many other goodies...

[BaltACD]

QUOTE: Originally posted by MP57313

$2.4 million is a lot of bucks for 30 seconds. As mentioned above "big rail" is not in the retail business, so I can't imagine they'd spend the bucks. Maybe during a golf game...

$2.4M is roughly the price of a new AC locomotive, or a new mile of track.

It is tough enough for railroads to part with that amount of money for the staples of the industry.....let alone for advertising....advertising to a public that has no idea of logistics and has no ability to spend any money that would present a direct return on the money invested in the advertising.

[CBQ_Guy]

Ha. I'd like to see an "old head" have a "wardrobe malfunction" [:-^]

[coborn35]

Some of the major class1 railroads could pool some money and run some Operation Lifesaver commercials to raise public awareness.