The ‘jam’ in traffic jams
In Malawi and most countries, it is a usual day-in, day-out mundane “chore” to be stuck in traffic jam, whether it is the daily bottleneck when commuting to work, or endless delays on the road during lunchtime.
According to www.numbeo.com, the 2017 Traffic Index estimates that drivers in most African countries spend 60 minutes in traffic. Jams are not only frustrating, they are also a major contributor to air pollution, and that is bad not just for our climate, but everybody’s health too. Then there is the economic cost of lost hours and delayed deliverables. If that is not enough, drivers waste fuel as well as wear and tear to their vehicle.
This is not a new problem, of course not only an African or Malawian problem. According to researchers at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, drivers in the 10 most-congested cities in the United States spend around 42 hours in traffic jams every year.
During the car boom of the 1960s, city planners had one seemingly obvious solution: build more and wider roads. But this did not work. The more roads created, the more cars they attracted. In California, for example, a 1997 study found that new additional traffic will fill up to 90 percent of any increase in highway capacity within just five years. The primary problem here many people insist on driving their own car, instead of sharing rides.
The point is, traffic jams are not going away in the near future. One of the challenges our country is facing is power outages induced by load shedding which forces people who spend the day at work, business or school, to return home without power. They are unable to listen to the radio or watch television and they miss out on what is trending.
The recent upsurge in the use of digital media owing to the proliferation of smartphones on the market, has failed to take hold owing to the unreliability of modern lithium ion batteries. The development of modern lithium ions has not kept the pace with development of power-intensive smart phones, which leaves the users with only a limited amount of run-time from a single charge.
One of the surest ways to get the attention of the largest proportion of the economic active people is through the traffic jam. According to recent Arbitron, 31 percent of travellers make purchase decisions in the car, the well-timed and creative adverts can effectively influence purchase decisions. Whether you are advertising for your clients or simply advertising for an upcoming event taking place, it is important to consider how to use this rarest opportunity in a day whereby you have the people utmost attention.
Commuters have no choice but use the time they spend stuck in traffic to catch up on advertising using radio, billboards or digital media accessible on their phones. When stuck in traffic, people cannot help but stare at the advertisements along the roads, listen to the radio or scroll through their newsfeeds on Facebook.
I recall a time when Stagecoach embraced the idea of using their buses for branding, introducing people to prominent local brands at the time. Fast forward to 2018, it disheartening to see that minibus operators have abandoned the idea of branding their buses.
As Malawi is still on its path to development where we are yet to have nice roadsides and larger sites for branding, we should cease the countless opportunities available to us. In other countries more and more companies are opting for messages that inch along with their traffic-jam-trapped targets. Transportation-based advertising posted on cars, buses, trains or displayed in airports and at transit stations—accounts for nearly 20 percent of outdoor advertising revenue.
As city councils and engineers engage to find the solution to beating traffic congestion, if it indeed comes, will probably take a long time to reap rewards. If at least some of the new ideas are a success-whether it is congestion charges, driverless cars, smart parking spaces or commuter apps, we should embrace the situation and make it as less frustrating as possible by filling it with content. n
