Please!!! Somebody stop these desperate, addicted advertisers and the drug-dealing media companies that support the sickly habit of attention disruption by obnoxious intrusion. They’re destroying our free space! AdAge reports (noted via Peter Kim‘s linkblog) :
"Conveyor belts have never been on anybody’s radar screen for marketing," said Frank Cox, president-CEO of EnVision Marketing Group, a Little Rock, Ark., firm with a patented system to print digital, photo-quality ads directly on conveyor belts. "But a store with eight to 10 checkout lanes, well, you’re talking about 100 square feet of wasted ad real estate."
Cincinnati-based Kroger Stores is the first national retailer to open checkout lines to the ads in a test in a few dozen of its stores, mainly in northwest Arkansas; Jackson, Miss.; and Memphis, Tenn. Harps Food Stores, a 52-store grocery chain based in Springdale, Ark., is also testing the system in 13 stores.
It’s a tragedy of the commons. How far can the end be? To guys like Frank Cox: would you consider your face wasted real estate space, provided there probably is no ad there yet?
Trust me. Conveyor belts are not the answer.
