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Bicycles are Advertising's New Vehicle
Couriers target Bay Street for Web firm
Toronto Star, August 31, 2000
By Tony Wong
The first billboards were essentially huge fixed signs to attract
motorists.
Then someone got the bright idea to put billboards on movable objects
such as buses, street cars and taxis.
Now a Toronto entrepreneur is putting billboards on bicycles.
The way Stephen Mathes, owner of Alternative Ballyhoo Bike Sign
Advertising sees it, that tiny steel triangle of empty unused space in
the middle of your bike is valuable real estate.
“It just hit me that we were all over the place as bike couriers, so we
should put signs on our bikes,” said Mathes.
“Some people thought it was a great idea, other people thought it was
the stupidest thing they'd ever heard of.”
A former courier turned advertising entrepreneur, Mathes convinced his
first client, Internet company Stockhouse.ca that bikes were the way to
spread the word.
“We wanted to reach our clients on Bay Street and we thought this would
be a great way to do it,” said Aphrodite Karamitsanis, Stockhouse
director of marketing, in an interview from Hong Kong.
“We've never spent huge amounts of dollars on traditional media, and we
thought this type of guerrilla advertising fit in perfectly with where
we were going.”
For two months, 15 bike couriers will display specially designed
Stockhouse.ca canvas banners fastened to their bike frames.
Stockhouse, which claims to be Canada's busiest investing Web site,
hopes that the couriers, as they make deliveries to their Bay Street
clients, will raise the profile of the company.
Mathes estimates that Team Stockhouse will cover approximately 45,000
kilometres and make some 18,000 visits over the next two months.
Covering uncharted territory, Mathes wasn't sure how much to charge for
his service. With rickshaw drivers on Front St. charging around $170
per ad, Mathes decided to charge $200 per bike per week.
“We didn't want to rip anybody off, but we didn't want to shortchange
our couriers either. We're still working on it.”
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