Advertising pays

I'll come to the picture and title eventually, I promise.

Earlier this week I was in what is now Derwentside, but more familiar as County Durham. The trip was entirely business but co-incidentally included the village of my earliest upbringing which was a small mining community and whilst the coal mines themselves have gone the miners' homes of my infancy are still there.

And for those who wonder why I don't have a Geordie accent I was removed south before I learned to talk.....

(I'm not saying where I was or you'll work out who I was seeing!).

Anyhow, back out of Newcastle Airport, through Bristol, London, and today in York which brings me to the subject of today's blog.

Earlier this year I launched the two prototypes of my scheme to put double-deck advertising sites on single-deckers. The double-deckers command much better revenue than single-deckers but in some places we just don't have the numbers of double deckers in the local fleet.

Well I am delighted to learn that these units have withstood the ravages of low trees and bus washes, they have not worsened fuel consumption nor wind resistance, and have been sold out since their inception. A further eight buses are therefore now added to the York fleet and again they are fully sold to blue-chip customers - Fenwicks, York Dungeon and others.

In this difficult economic climate, commercial advertising is an easy saving so I am especially grateful to those organisations who have chosen to advertise with us. York Dungeon told me that their research shows an amazing percentage of visitors learned or were reminded of their venue as a result of bus advertising - far greater than other media, so bus advertising does work!

My greatest supporters have been the people at Wrights who designed me an advertising module which looks 'designed in' rather than 'planted on' and is light and simple; and CBS Outdoor who took the idea, ran with it, and sold it so successfully.

Thanks everyone and now we have a successful product which we can 'roll-out' elsewhere too.

Left to right, the girl who did it for us Wendy Mullins from CBS Outdoor who sold all the sites, me, and Linda Gray from Fenwicks - already one of my most satisfied customers!