Who Are The Ad Wizards Who Came Up With This One?

I have to hand it to the marketing people at 7Up. I was on the Toronto subway yesterday, sweating through another brutally humid afternoon. I get onto the transfer car at Bloor-Yonge, and every single ad on the train (probably 15-20 in total) was for 7Up. The taglines all read things like “It’s getting cooler already,” accompanied by a shot of a crystal-clear 7Up in a tall glass of ice.

Unlike Homer and the clown college billboard, there was no delayed reaction for me: I was instantly hooked. By the time the train got to Union Station, I would’ve gladly killed for a sip of a 7Up. It was the first thing I looked for at the station variety store. The punch line? I don’t even really like 7Up.

This is the power of captive advertising. It plays on your basest instincts while stuck in one place – in this case a crowded, sweaty subway car filled with people with varying degrees of body odour. Just imagine how dangerous such ads would be if put in the wrong hands. If it was a subway car full of, say, NRA ads, you could have a massacre on your hands. God bless Canada’s stringent gun laws! That gun registry was a great idea after all!.......(crickets chirping)