Q I have seen a number of London buses carrying exclusive
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advertising for particular firms. Can you tell me what it costs to use a bus for such exclusive advertising, whether the advertiser has any say in when and where the bus operates and what happens lithe vehicle is off the road for a period?
ALondon Transport at present has six such buses operating carrying advertising for Ladbrokes the bookmakers, Yellow Pages, British Leyland Uni-Parts, Younger's Tartan Bitter, Sharp's Radio and Bertorelli's ice-cream.
The cost for the use of the bus is 0500 per year or £1000 per month for a minimum of three months. The advertiser is responsible for the cost of painting the bus to the livery of his choice — which has to be approved by LT on the basis of its compatibility with other advertising — and for the cost of repainting the bus to the original LT red livery after the advertising contract period.
It is not possible to give examples of the cost of painting the bus in the advertiser's colours because this varies widely depending on the complexity of the design, the number of colours used and so on. It can, however, be very expensive, for example, the Younger's Tartan Bitter vehicle had to be taken to Edinburgh to be painted in its tartan livery. The cost of repainting to LT's original livery is about £250.
The advertiser's wishes regarding the particular area of operation of the vehicle are complied with where possible except that no more than one of these vehicles is allowed by LT to operate on any route at any one time. Schedules are planned so that these vehicles are on the road for the maximum possible number of hours in the day in order to get maximum advertising effect.
If for some reason the bus has to spend an exceptional — compared with usual — amount of time off the road for maintenance or repairs then the advertising charge is adjusted accordingly. However, LT says that every effort is made to carry out maintenance when the vehicle is not required in service, so reducing the downtime.