San Francisco orders that cookie-scented strips in bus shelters be removed

[Auggie]

Freshly baked ads are toast: City orders that cookie-scented strips in bus shelters be removed.

San Francisco Chronicle, 12/5/06

City officials in San Francisco have ordered the immediate removal of cookie-scented strips from bus shelters -- one day after they went in as part of a marketing campaign to promote milk.

The demand was made to CBS Outdoor, the company that holds the advertising contract for the city's bus shelters, late Monday night.

The company was asked by the Municipal Transportation Agency, which runs the city's public transit system and has jurisdiction over the bus shelters, to remove the scented strips today, said Steve Shinn, a vice president of the company.

The move came amid public concern over potential allergic reactions to scented products.

more:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/05/BAGQDMPQB319.DTL

[rocktivity]

1. Not allergic to scents, but when those strips were in magazines

I hated them anyway. And where would it have ended? The aromas of bread? Steak? Sweat?

x(
rocknation

[Auggie]

2. I thought this was way overboard. And I'm in advertising too.

[nuxvomica]

3. There is way too much advertising nowadays anyway

I couldn't even read the article before an animated AOL ad finished. Jeez! I tried reading Vanity Fair at my hair cutters the other day and my chair was ready before I even found my way to the frickin' table of contents. There is way too much advertising, period. And I work for a company that makes most of its money from advertising.

[Bonescrat]

4. A coworker walked past my cube this morning...

and OH MY GOD didn't the smell of some aweful perfume just hit me in the face like a frying pan. It made the air feel thick like inhaling cotton. :puke:

[Mojambo]

5. Those have to be torture on the hungry homeless. n/t

[mahatmakanejeeves]

6. That explains it

There was a segment about the total cleverness of this form of advertising on one of those early morning infotainment TV shows this morning. Since it's CBS Outdoor that has the contract, then it was whatever CBS calls its morning show that ran this.

At the time, I thought this was just another form of street spam. I didn't hang around to watch the segment.

I despise street spam. I live to take it down.

[Ian David]

7. When will they pull the ones that smell like vomit and urine? n/t