Turning heads: Mexico City's subway system could get a makeover if plans to increase advertising pan out. (Spotlight).

The turnstiles of Mexico City's subway click furiously all day long, all over the sprawling city. When the trains rest at midnight, 4.4 million passengers will have clicked their way in and out of the world's third-busiest subway system. And that means that roughly 8.8 million eyeballs will have glanced at its advertisements, or what few there are.

"The Metro" has been the city's exemplary public service for the last 32 years. It is easy to navigate, clean, relatively safe and, more importantly, inexpensive. Subsequently, it is no great moneymaker--city officials have always considered it their job to keep the trains moving, but not to turn a profit from them.

However, the present administration, battling increased budget restraints, is faced with finding greater sources of revenue. Knowing that raising ticket prices will be met by a citywide grumble or worse, they have, not surprisingly, found the answer in advertising.

Today, the Metro makes about US$7 million a year from advertisements, representing only around 1% of its operating budget.

TURN-STYLING A PROFIT

Metro officials say that they are creating a new set of rules that will allow advertising companies to turn the Metro into a wonderland of TV consoles, radio broadcasts and perhaps even animated commercials in the tunnels. Come next year, they expect ad revenue to represent almost half of the value of the 1.4 billion tickets sold annually. They are talking about nothing less than a 4,000% increase in ad revenue within the span of one year.

Subways across the world are an advertiser's delight. Given the tight quarters, passengers tend to avoid eye contact with each other and search for distractions. Being a nearly captive audience, they have little choice but to contemplate the catchy gimmicks before them. In Tokyo, paper ads dangle before passengers' faces as they move in and out of the trains. In New York, a soap ad asks a rider to think about how many germs he has just picked up after touching a pole.

In Mexico City's subway, a poster announces that the Buena Vista Social Club, Cuba's legendary group of balladeers, is coming to the Zocalo. The only problem: the ad and concert are two years old.

Along the platforms, nearly one-third of the displays are empty. Fluorescent bulbs hang nakedly. "Scratchiti" is endemic.

WHAT WENT WRONG?

"In the past no one thought that advertising should be an important source of income," says Orlando Delgado, the Metro's budgeting director. "It was absolutely secondary, and now what we've seen is that selling advertising space, if done correctly, will allow us to make quite a bit of money, like in other large subways in the world."

Before the Metro can undergo its big facelift, however, there are a few legalities to settle. In 1998, a ten-year lease was signed with Enterprise, an advertising company that handles nearly all of the Metro's advertisements. According to the deal, it was supposed to give the Metro 40% of its advertising revenue. Metro officials claim that it has failed to do so, and because Enterprise has not met its obligation, Metro officials have every right to annul the contract.

While the city government terminates the deal, officials are studying other subways in the world and establishing new guidelines. For example, instead of receiving a percentage of advertising sales, the Metro will charge a yearly fee for ad space. There will most likely be five contracts, each corresponding to different parts of the Metro. They include contracts for the wallspace along the platforms, consoles and multimedia displays inside trains and possibly space in the tunnels themselves, where companies have toyed with the idea of placing a series of ads that, as the train moves along, create a cinematic effect.

TUNNEL LOGISTICS

Advertising agencies say they are eager to see the new rules. Although the average Metro passenger earns only US$10 a day, the sheer quantity of riders makes Mexico City's subway ideal for advertising mass-market products like detergents and soft drinks.

"Mexico is a socially stratified country," says Carlos Betancourt of Circulo Creativo Mexicano, a group of leading Mexican advertising companies. Although the Metro "is not like the one in New York or Chile, where someone riding the subway may have an Audi," the "medium is excellent because you have the guarantee of lots of people."

Advertisers are quick to point out that there are many people from the upper classes in Mexico City who have never stepped foot inside Metro tunnels and probably never will. Even so, advertisers have begun studying the different lines, and the peculiarities of their riders. The green line travels between the city's two largest universities, and the orange line cuts through Polanco, one of the city's wealthiest areas.

Tony Hidalgo, director of creative services at advertising agency Leo Burnett Mexico, says that even though there is a great amount of interest in Metro advertisement, his greatest concern is that companies are given no guarantee that their advertisements will not be damaged by passengers. He said that he looks forward to the day when advertisers are given greater creative freedom, when "you can decorate an entire train with, say, Coca Cola, and turn the red line truly red and have it cross the entire city."

But that day will most likely never come. Officials admit that they want to make a lot more money, but not at the cost of the Metro's image. The orange train, they say, is as much a part of Mexico City culture as the Angel de la Independencia.

"Business for some should not mean unhappiness for others," says Javier Gonzalez Garza, the Metro's general director. "If we let them put ads everywhere, it'll become a disaster, they'll turn the city into a total garbage bin."

Luis Canut, director of operations at the Metro, agrees. "We believe that advertisements are a good thing, because they inform people. But it shouldn't get to the point where they are in everybody's face."

Ultimately, what officials want to avoid is the billboard smorgasbord that has overrun Mexico City's skyline. While the Metro's tunnels are noticeably devoid of advertisements, above ground, the city's most important highways have suffered an onslaught of large advertisements heaped one on top of the other. The city government has begun dismantling illegal billboards, some weighing upwards of 40 tons. They estimate that Mexico City has nearly 8,000 billboards, of which only 1,137 have licenses.

Although Metro officials do not want to recreate the same phenomenon, they do point out that the billboard industry generates about US$32 million a month, a figure they are using to estimate the value of advertising space inside the Metro.

Now that officials have secured a reliable source of additional funds, they claim there will now be money to repair stretches of rails that have sunk along with the rest of the city, and to repair some of the existing trains that are in need of maintenance--without a huge hike in ticket prices.

Graham Gori is a Mexico City-based freelance writer.