Advertising and physiology

“Give piss a chance” is the new slogan one can read in the toilets of Bucharest pubs, where the billboards of OOPS Media are exhibited. Mircea Toma, the well-known journalist from Academia Catavencu weekly magazine, and Stan Constantin, a photographer, are partners in this indoor advertising business.

The original billboards were launched on the market at the beginning of the year. Why in the toilet? Because, Mircea Toma says, “everybody turns into a philosopher in the toilet.”

This reason has two consequences advocating the two partners’ business. “One can place information and texts there and it takes one minute and a half to read it.

There are no other visual stimuli, no remote control to change the channel, no page to be turned, no car to drive, the subject has a free mind and is generally alone in there.”

Beside the two owners, the company has one employee, who is both manager and worker, who installs billboards and answers the phone, also being Stan’s father-in-law.

Mircea believes in companies with “virtual head-office” and thanks God for mobile telephony, but Stan thinks a head-office in its traditional meaning is necessary and this is why he is working on it.

For the time being, everything happens through the telephone, while business meetings are held in the pubs where billboards are already installed.

As a psychologist, Mircea Toma appreciates the chance of having met a distinct social category: the owners of restaurants, pubs, clubs and other such places.

“Some of them are engineers, architects, a few are foreigners and also the old generation of professionals,” Mircea explains.

He says they had been mulling on the idea for two years, but the most important aspect was missing: the toilets were dirty and the client got out quickly. The situation has changed for one year and a half.