While I was at The Concept Farm last week I received a call from a New York Post reporter, Holly Sanders, who covers the business and marketing “beat” in NYC. Holly is a sharp reporter and she knows that she can always count on the “Farmers” for some creative insights and good ole’ NY savvy.

Like every other municipality, NYC is wrestling with budget  shortfalls and looking for ways to generate additional revenue. The MTA is planning on some substantial fare hikes for the New York City Transit System. Also, it just so happens that advertising is the second highest revenue source for the MTA. So, the premise of the article is how can advertising be “dialed up” to generate additional revenue to help save the day. An impossible task, of course, so Holly decided to have a little fun with the article - “How to Save The Subway Fare - Madison Ave Bigs Give MTA Some Advice - and create a top ten list of ideas.

“The Post reached out to Madison Avenue’s best and brightest and asked them for out-of-the-box ideas to raise revenue for the city’s mass transit system.”

All fellow farmer Griffin Stenger and I , had to hear was “out of the box ideas” and our minds went to work. In addition to being a little “out there” we also decided that the ideas should focus on the opportunity not the problems and offer some type of reward and “possibility”. (Very ABT of us, isn’t it) We came up with 8-10 ideas and five made it into the article….the top four ideas in the article are ours.

1. The Subway Lotto

2  Swipe Media

3. Vanity Metro Cards

4. Daily Transit TV

5. The Subway Takeover

(We take no responsibility for the remaining five)

Holly’s article is a fun quick read and I think you will enjoy it. Love to hear some of your ideas…we’ll pass them along to the Mayor Bloomberg.

Hank Wasiak