Bloomington residents could see less advertising on the outside of Bloomington Transit (BT) buses starting in 2025.
BT’s contract with Mesmerize Media, the company that sells the ads, runs through the end of this year.
At Tuesday’s meeting of BT’s five-member board, Doug Horn raised his concern that the advertising on the outside of BT’s buses has eroded the public bus agency’s visual identity.
There was not a voting item about bus advertising on the board’s Tuesday agenda—but consideration of a contract renewal with Mesmerize could come before year’s end.
Horn brought up the issue at the end of the meeting during the time that is reserved for comments from board members.
Horn has long disliked advertising on the outside of buses. But a written message he’d received in connection with a bus crash on Indiana Avenue prompted him to bring up the topic at Tuesday’s board meeting.
According to media accounts, the crash stemmed from a failure by a pickup truck driver to yield to a BT bus, which caused the two vehicles to smash into a house at the corner of Indiana Avenue and Cottage Grove Avenue.
Horn is co-owner of the rental property. The property management company received an inquiry from an Indiana University student who is enrolled in a journalism class, an excerpt of which Horn read aloud:
I also wanted to ask about doing a short interview for one of my journalism classes. We are doing a story on the Ken Nunn bus that crashed into one of your properties, and I would love to have a quick three to four minute interview about the crash. The interview is just for a class here in Indiana, and will be very quick and easy.
Ken Nunn is a local attorney whose full-wrap ads on BT buses are abundant. On a B Square Thursday morning visit to the downtown transit center, all four buses waiting in the bays had a full wrap of advertising for Nunn’s law firm.
After reading the snippet aloud, Horn said first that he hopes that BT’s driver is OK.
But Horn continued, “The thing that was upsetting to me about this—even beyond a building being hit—was that this person knows Bloomington Transit as the ‘Ken Nunn bus,’ and I am almost livid about that.”
Horn added, “And I’m just worried that we have lost an identity when someone requesting an interview about a Bloomington transit event refers to it as a ‘Ken Nunn bus’.”
BT general manager John Connell concurred with Horn’s basic point, saying, “You’re exactly right. I agree with you 100 percent.”
Connell continued, pointing out that when BT filmed its recent driver recruitment video, it was noticeable that all the buses had advertising everywhere, when the point of the video was to generate buzz about employment at Bloomington Transit.
As a first step, Connell said, he had notified Mesmerize that BT’s four new all-electric buses will be wrapped with BT branding, and would not be available for advertising.
Connell said that he thinks a better approach to bus advertising is to allow it on just part of the fleet, say 25-percent of vehicles.
Board chair James McLary looked ahead to the expiration of Mesmerize’s contract at the end of this year. If advertising on BT’s buses is going to be reduced or eliminated, then BT needs to put Mesmerize on notice, before talking about a contract renewal, McLary said.
The current contract with Mesmerize calls for a 55-percent commission on the bus advertising it sells. For 2024, BT budgeted $155,000 in revenue from advertising sales. For 2025, BT’s spending plan calls for $175,000 in advertising revenue, which is a conservative number.
BT controller Krista Browning said at Tuesday’s meeting she thinks the actual number will be closer to $200,000 a year.
A counterpoint to the idea of eliminating bus advertising was offered by board member Kent McDaniel. About the idea of eliminating advertising on BT buses, McDaniel said: “I’ll confess, I’m skeptical,” adding, “ I like $200,000 in revenue—free money, you know?”
Horn put the $200,000 figure in the context of a basic operations budget for BT of around $13 million, and called it a “rather minor amount.”
Horn summed up his position by saying, “If those that are potential riders, see us as something other than Bloomington Transit, I’m just really saddened by that, and I don’t think it’s good business.”
About advertising on the outside of buses, Horn said, “I didn’t like it when it started. I still don’t like it.”
Ken Nunn was allowed to advertise on WAY, WAY too many busses. One is ok. Transit was simply money hungry.
Remove all the ads. It’s just that easy.
I’ve long felt the same. I attended a few BT community outreach meetings a year or two ago and part of the conversation was raising community awareness of BT. I thought then, and still do, that the advertisements erase the BT identity from their own busses.
I’m supportive of either scaling back the number of wrapped busses or, if possible, limiting the amount of space on any bus that can be advertised. Instead of wrapping the whole bus, confine the advertisement to one portion and have the rest reflect BT.
yeah that’s what i was thinking – covering less of each bus seems like a good compromise. advertising becomes much more oppressive once it covers the entire bus including the windows!
It was ALWAYS about revenue, and NOT about public image. I was always over-ruled when it concerned whole bus-wraps and it’s affect on community perception. Perhaps if Ben and Jerry’s had led the charge into whole wraps the Bloomington community would not be so concerned?
Not seeing Kenny Nunn’s rictus grin all over the place sure would be nice…
Those full-wrap ads on busses are not only hard to look at, but also hard to look through. Why watch a good-looking town go by through windows damaged by advertising?
Answer this question, Bloomington: What are busses for?
If advertising is one of the answers, you get an F.
The same question applies to your own car. How much would Ken Nunn have to pay to make your car his, with a big yellow ad wrapped around it? The city should look at its busses the same way.
Everything the city does should make it work, look, and run better.
Wrapping public transportation in advertising is a far bigger value-subtract for the city than whatever income-add that ugliness brings.
So here’s a specific recommendation: Stick with panel advertising (called King, Queen, and Tail), and get rid of the two Kongs (King and Queen) and the Full Wraps. We’ll still pull in some advertising money and all of the busses will again be known for their city.
I personally really enjoy seeing Ken’s ads around town. It offers a sense of security to me.
Great article! The new BT transit electric buses are beautiful! I agree; limit the space of ads, or provide them inside the bus near the top edge as the buses already do now – sometimes when I’m riding and listening to music, my gaze goes up to the ads there and I actually look at them. Might be the only ads (anywhere) that I consciously look at by choice, haha. I’d be interested in hearing what other transit companies have done and if removing full wraps have financially impacted them.
I always thought that was the Ken Nunn bus full of lawyers rushing to an accident.
It’s a silly short-sighted, reactionary BT ad policy as well. https://bloomingtontransit.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Advertising-Policy-2016.pdf
They no longer let any social services advertise because they don’t involve a “commercial transaction”. After getting caught in their previously nonspecific policy by an extreme political group that wanted to post ads on their busses – they threw the baby out with the bathwater and instead of crafting language that would tease that sort of entity out, they just swung completely the other way and now only permit commercial enterprises to put any ads on the busses.
So who can advertise? Library? nope. City? nope. Nonprofits? nope. Visit Bloomington? nope. If you ain’t selling something… you don’t get to advertise. But it didn’t used to be that way.
I had grant money and a mandate to “get the word out in a big splashy way” about a new online resource available to the whole community and was turned down flatly by BT for ad space because the resource was free and didn’t involve a “commercial transaction”.
That was the whole point – to use advertisement as public service. Advertise where those who need the resource most will learn about it and access it. There is a lot of room between the policy to avoid “any risk that acceptance and display of advertising relating to any political, religious, social, or public issue” and a bus ad that promotes access to a City-sponsored, non-political, free resource.
As their own policy states “BPTC recognizes that its passengers are a captive audience to any advertisements in or on its busses. Many passengers have no transportation alternatives other than BPTC’s service.”
Great, so what this policy gets you is a fleet of Ken Nunn buses.