I think there are three essential skills to riding the NYC subway: catching the L train, looking really casual while leaning on the subway doors, and avoiding eye contact. The most important of the three must be avoiding eye contact; there is nothing worse than awkward subway eye contact. So, where to look? The only place left to look is to the multitude of ads in the trains and subway stations. I want to look at the recent Seamless subway ads all over the 14th st-Union Square station and subways.
Seamless is a popular digital food delivery service and recently they’ve run an ad campaign all over the union square station. These ads are very targeted towards youth culture. More specifically towards the “lazy,” or “shut-in” young New Yorker. The subway space is much like the “shrink-wrapped, ” (65) ad-heavy events described in Naomi Klein’s “Alt. Everything: The Youth Market and the Marketing of Cool.” The subway and subway stations are enclosed spaces made up of advertisements. Ads inhabit so much of subway space and as Klien points out, it’s an example of how “it is a colonization not of physical space but of mental space” (66). Riding the subway is a big part of many New Yorkers daily routine and it’s important to measure the effect of these ads and what they are saying because they are what we look at the most while on the subway. The ads and their message become part of our daily routine; it’s hard to imagine the subway without them.
The Seamless ads show that Seamless is “in” on the joke. The ads are filled with intertextual references to other websites/apps. Referencing apps like Foursquare or websites like Reddit, Seamless invites itself into those apps/websites audiences. To ‘get it’ you have to understand the reference and be apart of that already constructed, plugged in audience. After all the add is referencing a “sub-reddit” not just Reddit…
The ads are hip and cool. There is a lot of “ironic detachment” (79) to this method. They poke fun of you, “Your delivery guy’s 246th check-in oust you as “Mayor” of your own apartment” (ad below), delivery services—the thing they are trying to promote—and how much you use delivery services. It assumes you are the quintessential New Yorker and calls you out on constantly using the service while inviting you into their delivery food system.
Seamless, the web-service, ads directly references other websites, mobile devices, because it knows its audience so well. It builds itself off that scene and surrounds the Union Square Station, a station and area known for a more youthful feel, with its ads. Inundates it with the jokes and at every turn reminds that Seamless is there for you. I think advertising in the subway, however invading it is to our already crammed personal space, is becoming an important fabric in youth market consumerism and these Seamless ads are the perfect example of such.
-Kareen
Response to Seamless in the Subway:
I agree that the seamless ads are definitely targeted towards the “lazy,” or “shut-in” young New Yorker, as I’ve received emails from Seamless when it’s a rainy day or it’s snowing, with them saying “stay in. get delivery.” in the subject line. It is easily one of the most ingenious marketing ploys, as it is one of those rare opportunities where timing is everything. It appeals to the the true need of “nourishment” but it also creates a false need of having to order in rather than making your own meal(83). Then again, maybe you don’t have any food and it really is your only answer. In that case, it’s probably one of the more honest advertisements out there. It also sounds the most close to home in that regard, since they “magically” know that it’s raining in your area.
The voice of seamless itself results in almost a guilty pleasure in how much ridiculousness you go through in your obsession with having food delivered to you. It is almost your own romantic escape, not necessarily in the “romantic ideal of going to a different place, but more on quite the opposite.(542) The “aesthetic dreams of the audience” are more about staying in, getting cozy, and having a lazy day, because you’ve worked so hard that you deserve it, dammit. (541) It’s definitely an aestheticization of everyday life..particularly the home”(543). Especially with this “showing in” that is talked about in the book, as this is basically someone at their most natural, I suppose(543). Seamless probably chose subways in their ad placements because subways are where people are either going to work(they can get it delivered) or they are going back home. It attempts to disrupt this everyday life by seemingly infiltrating these newly digitized “private spaces” (our foursquare accounts, our sub-reddit choices) and attempting to integrate themselves in our lives, thus earning their own private space in our lives.(543)
Seamless uses humor and is basically poking fun with it’s “you know you want to” type gestures. In fact, it already assumes you do these things and it’s a matter of calling you out on them. So it’s more of a “we know you do this, so why stop now/why not do it now?” It uses exaggeration and cleverness in it’s design, calling on the throwback Gen X’s about their sense of “entitlement for quality ads,” as most of them are pretty ridiculous in nature.(514) There are remnants of humor and even irony in some of the ads, especially the foursquare check in of the delivery man ousting you as the mayor. It’s self-deprecating to the consumer reading the ad, but it’s almost a way of individuating or “disentangling oneself” from the masses, as it’s almost considered a trophy or a badge(foursquare pun) to wear, which sounds like a remnant of when ads wanted to convey to you that their product would help them stand out from the crowd.(538) The irony exists in the fact that seamless is calling you out that you order delivery so much that it should be embarrassing, but you don’t care, and they know you’ll do it anyway.
Works Cited
Leiss, William, and Jackie Botterill. Social Communication in Advertising: Consumption in the Mediated Marketplace. New York: Routledge, 2005. Print.