An idea worth pilfering?

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Three / Goals / BullseyeA company called Campus Solutions is creating what it calls “Campus Power Zones” – essentially, station in areas of heavy campus foot traffic where students can recharge their portable electronic devices – giving them a captive audience for co-located ad-carrying entertainment.


The stations will provide electricity for cellphones, tablets and laptops – and while the devices are being charged, the students will be getting exposure to messages from the university or from advertisers.

“This is a creative way to capture the attention of college students across the country,” said Bryan Carbone, President, Campus Solutions. “We have learned traditional media is not as effective in reaching this audience, but providing a valuable service to them enables us to better capture their attention. We’re confident our ‘Campus Power Zones’ will be a popular addition to universities and a very unique way for marketers to capture the attention of users.”

As conceived by Campus Solutions, each CPZ will feature video and posters, which will be in front of users for their allotted 15-20 minute access limit.

The company is testing on 20 campuses and expects to have exposure to some 10M students by year’s end.

RBR-TVBR observation: We see no reason that a broadcaster could not borrow this concept – and we ask, why limit it to college campuses when entire cities full of busy professionals might benefit from the same sort of thing?

Once you’ve provided the power-up location, it will be a simple matter to make sure the programming that goes with it is exclusively from one of your own broadcast stations.

Whether you figure out how to create the stations on your own or work in concert with another company capable of pulling it off, we think it might be an idea worth exploring.

One more note: Isn’t it about time radio broadcasters reclaimed the college audience? We wouldn’t mind seeing a few full-sized clusters take an underperforming FM and trying to re-establish the free-wheeling spirit that made the early days of FM so exciting for so many of us.