One of the positives coming out of our recent economic challenges has been a proliferation of creative new advertising spaces.  Someone once said “Innovation comes from desperation”, and although I’m not sure desperate is how best to describe them, many marketers are seeking new and innovative media solutions.

So I wasn’t surprised to learn recently that agencies have turned to advertising in vacant store fronts in Manhattan and other areas of high pedestrian traffic.  Makes sense — it’s really prime real estate at street level, a space where advertisers compete for attention and eyeballs.  And historically, this has been a very hard place to purchase ad space. Not any more.

As retailers struggle to maintain position in a difficult economy, some have not succeeded.  Their empty storefronts provide ideal space for advertising messages, and several enterprising companies have stepped in to fill the void.

This is one of the reasons I love the agency business: there are always opportunities to make lemonade from lemons.  I don’t view it as preying on another’s misfortune.  It’s creativity and capitalism at their finest.

At Bailey Gardiner, we’ve recently had several opportunities to think differently for our clients by using unusual spaces to serve up our creative marketing messages.  For Seaport Village, we contracted with a pedicab company in downtown San Diego to create moving billboards, complete with matching tshirts for the drivers.  The Gaslamp Quarter welcomes more than 10 million people a year, and regardless of whether they actually get into the pedicab or not, that’s a LOT of eyeballs viewing our invitation to visit Seaport Village.

And for Hazard Center, we looked for ways to make their smaller budget work in bigger ways.  One solution – we wrapped coke machines at trolley stations, paying as little as $500 for a month at certain locations.  Trolley ridership in San Diego has never been higher, with recent figures as high as 100,000 per day, including commuters, visitors, event attendees, students and a couple of crazy people.  Wait times at stations varies from 5 minutes up to 20 minutes – time enough to stare at our ads for a few.

We’ve seen a lot of innovation coming from necessity. What have you witnessed?