Despite the irony of integrating wind power into a meter-cranking, electricity-vaporizing location like Times Square, another company, Japanese printing manufacturer Ricoh, is about to follow up on Coca Cola’s eco-billboard debut with a wind-powered billboard of its own.
In a time when some companies are either cutting back on or shifting their marketing investment from offline to online marketing, it’s nice to see a company like Ricoh doing something innovative and ecologically conscious in the digital out-of-home space.
Ricoh’s wind-powered digital billboard is scheduled to launch sometime in the next few weeks at 42nd and 7th Ave. The project will be powered WePOWER wind turbine technology (video demo), including 16 wind turbines and 64 solar panels.
How much juice are they saving? A Mediaweek article estimates “about 18 tons of carbon per year and about $12,000 to $15,000 a month in electricity.” I’m not sure what the cost of building and installing this type of an eco-advertising spectacle amounts to, but surely saving $12,000-15,000 on electricity alone is a decent ROI.
For full story, including an interview with WePOWER’s CEO about the future of “windvertising,” see: “Ricoh to Launch First Wind-Powered Ad” on MediaWeek.
Stephanie Jorgl