Plakanda to take on outdoor ad leader

Outdoor ad firm Plakanda last week launched a zł. 10 million ($2.4 million) investment plan challenging Art Marketing Syndicate's (AMS) dominance of the fast-growing market for citylights, or backlit advertisements.

Citylights - located at bus shelters and on buildings and lampposts - have grown to capture 11% of the outdoor ad industry in 2000 from 2.6% in 1998. The industry leader, AMS, has a 61% share of the national market and 71% in the capital. But Warsaw-based Plakanda now hopes to take a larger slice of the market. It currently owns 3,200 citylights across the country, but hopes to boost that figure to 5,000 next year, said Anna Nowakowska, Plakanda's marketing director.

"We estimate that this investment will increase our share of sales on the citylights market from 5-7% to 20% by the end of 2002," she said. "Citylights are our strategic market segment now."

Of the 1,900 citylights Plakanda plans to install next year, 1,500 will be in Warsaw, the country's biggest market. "In Poland, you don't sell advertising space locally," Nowakowska said. "It's done on the national level and it simply doesn't work if you don't have Warsaw, which is the most important city. That's why our share of total sales on the citylights market is small."

According to the Outdoor Advertising Association (IGRZ), in June 2001 AMS had 567 free-standing citylights in Warsaw and, through its subsidiary Adpol, 1,529 in bus shelters. By comparison, Plakanda owns 161 citylights in Warsaw, Nowakowska said.

"As we couldn't have full-blown access to bus shelters, which are operated by Adpol, we decided to invest in citylights (mounted) on street lamps," she said.

Nowakowska said lampposts are the best location for citylights because they're visible to drivers and pedestrians and due to their relatively small size (1.2 x 1.8 square meters) they can hang easily in areas of busy traffic.

But AMS spokeswoman Magdalena Dul was skeptical about the prospects for citylights mounted on lampposts.

"It's a new medium and nobody knows how it will sell yet," she said. "Citylights mounted on buildings have won only limited popularity because clients prefer bus shelters. It's hard to predict how street lights will be received."

The key to success on the citylights market, she said, will not be hanging ads on street lamps, but placing ads on so-called "street furniture" (bus shelters, benches and public toilets).

"A public tender will be announced in Warsaw to build street furniture for the city and this tender will be much bigger than Plakanda's (street lamp) expansion plans," Dul said. "(The company) that takes the street furniture in Warsaw will dominate the citylights market and if you seize the Warsaw market you'll dominate the country."

Robert Wylot