Here and in some other large transit hubs around the US, commuters are encountering advertising's latest version of saturation bombing. Called "station domination," the idea is to have one advertiser buy up all or most of the message spaces in one confined site, greatly increasing the chances of catching the eyes of even the most harried passers-by. "Literally anywhere anyone would look, they are bombarded," said Brigg Dinley, vice-president, special projects for CBS's TDI Worldwide, which sells ad space for sites including the World Trade Center. "We call it surround sound for the eyes."

Indeed, a station-domination display can be striking. Last year, in the first such campaign in the USTeligent saturated the World Trade Center with ads featuring dramatic lettering on fire-engine red back-grounds all promoting the Vienna, Virginia, telecommunications company.

Since then, five more brands - AMR's American Airlines, Spiegel's Eddie Bauer, DaimlerChrysler's Dodge, Dow Jones's Wall Street Journal and Bridge Information Systems - have taken over the World Trade Center. Other saturation advertisers are booked at the site through February 2000.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania Station and the Port Authority bus terminal in New York City now also offer bombardment packages, as do transit s4ystems in Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia and London. TDI brought the concept to Boston's South Station earlier this month.

Pure station domination banishes all competing ads, and a passerby can't change a channel or flip a page. Plus, commuter hubs let advertisers target affluent business consumers. It's also just the latest idea advertisers have embraced in their constant quest to stand out.

TDI charges$200,000 a month for the World Trade Center, its biggest site; Park Transit Displays, Weymouth, Massachusetts, which offers domination packages in some Boston area transit sites, charges about $50,000 for its stations. In both cases, the port or transit authorities get more than half of what the advertiser pays after taking out the ad agency's commission.

PSA Peugeot-Citroen was the first to launch a station domination campaign with TDI in London. In October 1997, the French car maker covered the London Underground's Earl's Court station with ads promoting its vehicles in an annual auto show across the street.

Clairol followed, turning Bond Street station into "Blond Street" station. The Bristol-Myers Squibb unit pasted a sky-blue "Welcome to Blond Street" banner over an archway to the escalators. Inside, posters featured sultry blondes peering over ocean waves. The tag line: "Blond Street. It could only happen here."

The idea crossed the Atlantic a year later when the Teligent campaign appeared in NewYork. But first, TDI had to get past local transit authorities, who worried domination might turn their stations into dens of crass commercialism - especially when advertisers wanted to slap ads in spaces that hadn't been used for ads before.

At the World Trade Center, for instance, 20 of the 138 ad sites are new. Two 15-meter-by-2.7-meter banners now cover the marble walls at the entrance to the PATH-train terminal. Two 90-centimeter-by-4.8-meter banners canvas a lower level dividing wall. Embedded in the floors are eight more ads, and at the escalators lie eight graphics. None of those ad spaces used to be there.

"You're putting up advertising on a marble wall that was designed to be pleasing to the eye," said Daniel Moffit, manager, transportation communications, for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. "You want something that's appealing that is going to catch (a commuter's) eye but is not going to make them close their eyes."

And some station officials noted with relief that advertisershave gotten more subtle since Teligent plastered the site with red. ( Moffit says the Port Authority has got no complaints about overkill through its Web site or its weekly consumer-comment forums.) Advertisers say the tactic pays off. Teligent credits the campaign with helping the company meet its New York area target for new customers. And American Airlines liked its February World Trade Center stint so much that the carrier is coming back again in September.

"That area really hits out primary target, which is the business traveller," said Bill Dreslin, a spokesman for American Airlines. Station domination "really cuts through the clutter."

The Asian Wall Street Journal