Metro buses fully wrapped in colorful advertising for beer and bingo have drawn criticism, but it's money in the bank for the financially strapped Madison bus system.

Metro and ad supplier Adams Outdoor Advertising officials say the income from advertisers putting their messages top to bottom and front to back, including over side windows, will allow Metro to make more money from ads in 2007 than ever before.

Firm figures are hard to come by because advertisers have varying-length contracts for the full wraps on buses, and not all of the maximum allotment of 15 are ready to roll with their paint schemes. But Metro marketing and customer service manager Julie Maryott-Walsh said "my guess is revenue will be more than what we've made in the past."

Adams general manager Chris Eigenberger said the full wrap ad plan has been very successful since it started March 27 with two buses and now has grown to nine with five more on the way.

"It's generated more money for Metro than advertising in any other previous year," Eigenberger said.

But that's not reason enough for Kevin Hinkley, who brought a petition to the City Council Tuesday opposing the wraps. More than 300 people signed the document, which asks the city to stop using buses for advertising alcohol and gambling.

While acknowledging that there have been alcohol and gambling ads on buses before, Hinkley said in an interview today that they were small and discreet.

"As a community, we voted we didn't want a little bit of Vegas in Madison," he said, referring to a failed 2004 referendum about casino gambling in Dane County.

"I also feel it sends a bad message to our kids, including my 14-year-old son," Hinkley said. "They can't even wear T-shirts with alcohol messages on them to school and now they will be riding buses to school with those message emblazoned on the outside. It sends a mixed message."

Madison Metropolitan School District spokesman Joe Quick, however, said school district officials have been told that the wrapped buses are on high-volume routes that do not include the morning and afternoon school routes to Madison high schools and middle schools.

"I'm told those buses will never be considered for school routes," Quick said.

BIG MONEY

The city has a three-year contract with Adams to sell full wrap ads on up to 15 buses, the limit imposed by the Transit and Parking Commission.

The contract pays the city $22,727 a month in the first year, $29,167 a month the second year and $18,750 a month the third year, so Metro will make at least $272,727 the first year, $350,000 the second year and $225,000 the third year.

Metro and Adams also will share revenues over and above the contract, with the bus service getting 40 percent and Adams 60 percent of revenues above the contracted amounts.

Adams sells full wrap ads for $4,000 per bus every four-week period (the minimum contract length), with the cost dropping to $3,600 a period if the advertiser buys an annual contract.

If all 15 buses were painted in full wrap schemes for a year at a time, advertisers would be paying more than $700,000, and Metro would make $553,000, more than double the contracted amount the first year.

Nine buses are wrapped with ads now with five more coming soon, when GM and Lexus start advertising new hybrid vehicles on five new diesel-electric hybrid buses Metro is taking delivery on in September.

DeJope Gaming and Einstein Wireless were the first to purchase full wrap transit ads in March, putting their colors on one bus each. Since then, Charter Communications wrapped five buses and Miller Brewing wrapped two buses in Miller Genuine Draft advertising.

The gambling and beer wraps raised the ire of some residents who filed a protest with the mayor's office to get the city to stop using public transit to advertise gambling and alcohol, but Maryott-Walsh said it's nothing new.

"We've had ads for Kessler whiskey and Ho-Chunk casino for years, but those ads weren't full wrap," she said, adding that the new revenue stream from the full wrap advertising means fewer budgetary headaches.

"I'd rather have the income from the full wrap ads than cut services or increase rates," Maryott-Walsh said. "Transit is expensive to operate." City policy won't allow certain advertising for tobacco products, or if the ad is deemed obscene, libelous or fraudulent.

Risque? Maybe.

"We had a full back (covers the exterior rear) on a bus for an intimate apparel store on Monroe Street," Maryott-Walsh said.

Eigenberger said Adams won't accept ads on buses for adult-oriented businesses such as a bookstore or a strip club, but alcohol and gambling is acceptable.

"It's a concern from some people but well before the wrapped buses were on the road we sold casino and beer ads on buses, so it's not new," he said.

Madison Metro is one of a dozen city bus systems in Wisconsin that have full wrap advertising on city buses, the others being Milwaukee, Green Bay, Beloit, Eau Claire, La Crosse, Appleton, Waukesha, Janesville, Beloit, Stevens Point and Baraboo.
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