August 28, 2009 – 11:00 pm
Some great local firms and organizations have already taken advantage of Swamplot’s limited-time-only lock-in-our-old-rates summer advertising special. How about you? Interested in putting your ads up on Swamplot at a last-chance price? Then hurry — this deal ends Monday! (Update, 8/31: At the end of the day.) There’s more info here.
Read more about: Advertising, Notices
August 26, 2009 – 3:50 pm
Curious about advertising on Swamplot? Now’s a great time to look into it!
Just a reminder that there’s only a little more time to lock in last year’s rates. You can read more about our summer special here.
Read more about: Advertising, Notices
August 20, 2009 – 3:45 pm
Here’s one thing all Swamplot advertisers have in common: They all started out as Swamplot readers. Eventually, each of them realized that if they’re reading and enjoying Swamplot, it’s likely a lot of their potential customers are too.
They are.
It makes sense then, for us to direct a few messages about Swamplot advertising to our general audience. Especially when we have something special to offer. And we do!
Swamplot’s advertising rates were last set a year ago, when this site had a significantly smaller readership. We’ve now raised them to better match our current numbers: More than 165,000 pageviews, from more than 37,000 absolute unique visitors, each month. All of them actively interested in Houston real estate, development, neighborhoods, home decor, and all that other Swamplot-y stuff we cover. They’re people like you.
So what’s the special? We wanted to give a chance to those readers who maybe hadn’t considered advertising on Swamplot to try it out — at our old rates!
You know those little 125×125-pixel “tile”-size square ads in the column to the right? We’ve got a few more of them to sell. For cheap. Ridiculously cheap.
Uh . . . how cheap?
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Read more about: Advertising, Notices
November 13, 2008 – 3:15 pm
Yesterday’s City Council vote wasn’t even close — which means that Houston will no longer allow “attention-getting devices” on commercial property, effective January 1st of 2010. The ban excludes fake quoins, oversized Alamo-shaped parapets, and strip-mall turrets, but it pointedly includes the inflatable menageries that are so much simpler to put up and take down.
Houston sure knows how to destroy its architectural history! In honor of the passing of this singular era, which exhibited such a flowering of the local decorative arts — and in advance of the less-than-spectacular demolitions that are soon to follow, Swamplot presents this short photo salute to Houston’s soon-to-be lost commercial landscape:
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Read more about: Advertising, Commercial Real Estate, Development Regulations, Inflatable Animals, Retail, Signage
November 12, 2008 – 3:01 pm
First, they came for the giant apes!
Houston’s City Council may vote today to ban the use of inflatable cartoon characters to draw traffic to local businesses. A law that’s already on the books requires permits for these “attention-getting devices,” and restricts their use. But there’s no money to fund enforcement.
The new law would prohibit more than just large blowup animals:
If approved, the ban also would prohibit flashy and motion-driven devices, such as dancing wind puppets, spinning pinwheels, pennants, streamers and strobe and spotlights. . . .
[Balloon vendor Jim] Purtee said his clients report sales increase 30 to 100 percent in the weeks after installing a giant balloon. “You can’t ban balloons without banning car wraps, those planes flying over Houston with trailing banners or people standing on the corner in a clown costume,” Purtee added. . . .
Officials said holiday displays and residential lawn decorations would be exempted from the ban. The prohibition would apply only to attention-getting devices used for commercial purposes.
That troubles Councilwoman Anne Clutterbuck. She asked how the city would distinguish between attention-getting devices and the holiday lights, bows and sparkly stars installed in Rice Village and the Galleria area.
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Read more about: Advertising, Inflatable Animals, Retail, Signage
Here’s one advantage if you’re one of the not-so-large number of retail centers in Houston that doesn’t have a parking lot in front: If business ain’t so hot, you can always sell the highly visible adspace on your facade!
A reader sends in this photo of an ad for Red Bull’s Art of Can competition on the streetfront of a retail center on Elgin, across from the Calais apartments in Midtown. The Maple Leaf Pub is two doors down.
Is this the future of retail real estate? Sure, we’ve all seen ads painted onto the sides of old buildings and the giant window stickers on David’s Bridal storefronts, but doesn’t this go a bit . . . beyond that? Think of the possibilities: Stores . . . with ads covering their entire fronts, advertising . . . other stores. Or anything.
Forget billboards, graffiti, and wheatpaste posters. When this new market really kicks in, we’ll see Houston for its revenue-generating possibilities: We’ve got acres and acres of exploitable advertising space.
Tyvek Housewrap was only the beginning.
What comes after Tuscan-themed shopping centers? Billboard-themed shopping centers!
After the jump: a second photo, so you can get your Red Bull straight.
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Read more about: 77006, Advertising, Art, Billboards, Commercial Real Estate, Midtown, Retail, Shopping Centers, Signs, Storefronts
