Szablyár Péter: Step by step - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)
"Mind your step" - stairs as an advertising medium
and detailed studies. Potential advertisers demanded precise data concerning the size and composition of the target population, the feasibility of preventing patterns of commercial avoidance (as is the case of commercial zapping among television- viewers), and the availability of citations. This form of advertising is an especially effective means of fostering and preserving brand-name recognition on a long-term basis, and it can also call attention to the vicinity of a particular retail or service outlet. The statistics of average daily passenger traffic on stairways and escalators in Budapest’s subways between 6:oo a.m. and io:oo p.m. shows a varied picture. It peaks out around 7:00 a.m. and then again around 5 p.m. with a trough occurring between 10:00 a. m. and 12 noon; female users tend to outnumber their male counterparts. If a commercial message is to be effective, advertisers have to be well-informed of target-group composition in terms of variations in age and income brackets among the escalator-users' population. Surveys of effectiveness have shown that an aggregate number of 364 people go up and down each set of stairs or escalator in a typical Budapest subway. Metro line 2 is used by a daily average of 451,627 passengers with a maximum of 23,000 per hour. The busier 3rd line is taken by as many as 626,179 people every day, with as many as 28,200 people travelling in an hour. And they always watch their step as they do so! Or perhaps not always? Standing on the escalator one tends either to contemplate the moving "waxwork museum” riding in the opposite direction or to study the advertisements appearing on the side-walls of the escalator shaft. The reappearance at regular intervals of the same commercial poster on the same side-wall can have a strong subliminal effect on our purchasing habits. The sloping surfaces on the balustrades separating one escalator from another are also very well suited to the purpose of alerting the passengers riding on the steps to various commercial drives. Commercial stairs — traffic or commerce? In September of 2009 a peculiar footbridge was set up in Petőfi Sándor utca. Nobody was particularly surprised by this, but when an inscription on the construction announced that it was "The Bridge of the Arts”, people were compelled to look around them to see where this aluminium structure was brought here from. The eastern pier stood by the entrance to a representative shop, which used to serve some other purpose before somebody mounted the sign "FUGA Budapest Architectural Centre" on it. For its part, the western pier did no more than narrow further the already tight passage on the pavement outside Katona József Theatre. The publicity surrounding the object also revealed that a new, multi-functional space was about to be born, 79
