Green pitch scores for outdoor sales

JCDecaux recycles more than 95 per cent of its products and all its ad posters in France. Picture / Martin Sykes

PARIS - With growing public concern about global warming, the green buzz is everywhere and for JCDecaux it is starting to pay off.

Europe's biggest outdoor advertising company is installing solar-powered bus shelters in Los Angeles, collecting rain water for washing in New Delhi, and running self-hire bicycle schemes in cities offering ad space contracts in return.

Besides a concern for the environment, going green gives a marketing pitch for the group which, like its sector peers, has sometimes had to face criticism that billboards create "visual pollution".

It is also increasingly helping it win tenders with municipalities eager to cut energy bills or reduce congestion and traffic pollution.

"Sustainable development is a selling pitch, but for us it's also a key issue," said the firm's chairman, Jean-Charles Decaux.

For example, the French family-owned group has renewed a 10-year contract for 3500 advertising panels with Barcelona in a tender largely dominated by environmental issues.

One French analyst said there was a growing weight of sustainable development criteria in tenders, while another said JCDecaux's green focus was in line with growing efforts by image-conscious media firms to improve corporate governance, human resources or diversify content.

"Let's say that at this stage being green helps them keep and secure contracts but ... as with any emerging trend it's hard to quantify," he said.

The group invented the "street furniture" concept of supplying town and local communities with free, well-designed street furniture in return for the use of ad space on these structures.

The idea was expanded to public restrooms, information pillars, electronic newspapers and interactive terminals.

JCDecaux operates a network of 1000 solar-powered bus shelters, fits its street furniture with recycling bins for batteries or glass, and recycles more than 95 per cent of its products and all its ad posters in France - the equivalent of 3000 tonnes a year.

It also offers subsidised self-hire bicycle schemes to cities awarding poster advertising contracts.

- REUTERS