It takes a lot to get a New Yorker’s attention. After all, this is a city where a man died on the subway during his morning commute and nobody noticed until nightfall.
Keith Cohn, vice president of marketing at Web toy seller ToyTime.com, Los Angeles, believes he hit on one topic New Yorkers notice: their mayor, Rudolph “Rudy” Guiliani. Cohn posted an ad on a billboard in Times Square with the slogan, “It’s Time New York City Replaced Rudy.”
The picture in the ad is a computer mouse fashioned into a reindeer head with a red nose, but there’s no denying the name Rudy evokes the visage of the city’s outspoken – some would say obnoxious – mayor, who’s been hinting loudly that he’ll be running for the Senate against First Lady Hillary Clinton.
For the record, Cohn affects the attitude of a laid-back, apolitical Californian. “We were just talking about `Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,'” he explains. “It’s about how people don’t have to wait for Santa to deliver presents anymore, ToyTime.com can deliver them anytime,” he says, with a wink and a nod at the ad’s double-entendre.
The billboard is part of a campaign targeting the country’s most wired cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas and Washington.
This ad, like the other cities’, has increased awareness about ToyTime.com and boosted sales, as Cohn planned.
“We wanted something a little bit edgier in New York, and we felt this would fight through the clutter better,” he notes.
Other marketing for the site includes traditional broadcast ads and online banner ads as well as a catalog mailing.
The 8-month-old site, which went live in September, gets some 90,000 hits a day. It’s the premier toy vendor on MSN.
But ToyTime’s biggest direct marketing moment had yet to occur at press time. At the turn of the millennium, the billboard was to be in the most happening spot in creation.
“Never in humankind will as many eyes be focused on one place as they will be in Times Square on New Year’s Eve,” Cohn says jubilantly.
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