Saturday, July 26, 2008

Public Transportation in Advertising

My dad sent me a Shell ad from The Economist a few weeks ago. He thought it was good that they mentioned the importance of urban planning and public transport. My guess is that this was from the Shell International Office in Den Haag. It is a dutch company. I wish they would say this a little louder here, perhaps in newspapers and TV advertisements.

The United Nations predicts that half the world’s population will live in urban areas by the end of 2008 and about 70% will be city dwellers by 2050. There are expected to be more than 27 ‘mega-cities’ - each with more than 10 million people - by 2050.

More crowded cities means more fumes, more noise and more smog. So what to do?

At Shell, we believe the solution is a combination of cleaner fuels, cleaner engines, better public transport and better urban planning. We are doing our best with fuel improvements.


You can find the full text here at the Shell site.

(Full disclosure: My dad worked for shell for over 30 years before retiring.)

3 comments:

Rdan said...

This is rdan from Angry Bear. Your site looks thorough and interesting. Tom Bozzo has knowledge of transit economics and recommended we trade links.

Dan

http://angrybear.blogspot.com

Pantograph Trolleypole said...

Thanks rdan. you should check out The Bellows and Austin Contrarian for more econ blogs. Thanks for the link.

Morgan Wick said...

I think most people would think Shell could care less about "better public transport and better urban planning". That just comes across as a paean to groups that would otherwise see Shell as the enemy. That said, I agree with you that they should put those paeans in more visible advertising. I've seen their ads on BBC America that basically just say "go to our website to see this video" and I think at least some people might think "it's a propaganda website" and ignore it.