Time: 2 hours
Wall Street Journal
By THOMAS CATAN
WASHINGTON—This city is different; you just have to look at the side of a bus to see that.
"WE DON'T MAKE UAVs," reads one of the bus ads here.
"I have no idea what UAV stands for," says Marc Silverman, 29, a chemical engineer. "Is it something to do with AIDS?"
Every day in the nation's capital, commuters and visitors stare at ads in subway cars, on buses or on mobile billboards, unable to figure out what they mean.
But that doesn't bother advertisers. The ads aren't meant for everybody. They're only for the tiny part of the traveling public that holds the federal purse strings.
The wooing used to be conducted mainly in private. Companies would try to press a card into a policy maker's hand or meet a program manager at industry events sponsored by trade publications like Government Executive or Government Computer News.
But as the competition for lucrative federal contracts has intensified, it has spilled into the public arena—leaving many people baffled.
In one radio ad, a company called Qinetic North America touts its "engineering and technical support, field services support, plus innovative solutions to help protect our war-fighters including tactical robots and controllers, vehicle armoring [and] gunshot localization systems."
Another company—"the leader in cloud-based federal financial management"—offers "GCE Solution, with standardized financial business processes built in, eliminates the need for customizations that drive up costs and drag down projects."
Many of the ads on WTOP-FM, Washington's news, traffic and weather radio station, target government procurement officers and program managers as they're stuck in the capital's notorious rush-hour traffic.
Mysterious acronyms give the ads the flavor of coded Cold War era shortwave radio broadcasts: ISR, F136, IPV6 and ICD-10.
For the record, those stand for: Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance programs; a type of jet engine; a protocol by which data are sent between computers on the Internet; and the tenth revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems.
"Agencies demand provider diversity on networks on WITS 3 and GSA Schedule 70," says one radio ad, set to dramatic music. "Level 3 delivers it!"
Washington marketers say the gobbledygook has a purpose. Companies targeting a specific group of government employees "can use the federal acronyms so that they're weeding out the waste," explains Ralph Renzi, director of federal sales at WTOP radio.
In this case, the waste is listeners who aren't in the market for a fighter jet engine, aerial refueling tanker or cyber-security suite.
WTOP has seen advertising by companies seeking government contracts rise by up to 15% this year to become its biggest money-earner.
The segment has become so lucrative for the station that, a few years back, it started Federal News Radio, "the only station targeting the federal executive."
A typical ad on its website reads: "Get DCAA Compliant! Check out ICAT today!"
Clicking on the ad reveals ICAT to be an "Indirect Cost Allocation Tool for Government Contractors using QuickBooks."
The advertising segment has grown fast enough to have caught the attention of Google. The online advertising giant recently opened an office in Washington to target such advertisers. It says its Washington ad business has more than doubled in a year.
Some Washington ads revel in their obscurantism. One billboard, at the Pentagon Metro station, read: "THOSE WITH A NEED TO KNOW, KNOW," followed by a symbol made up of a circle with a wide "V" underneath. The ad was for a company named Palantir, which makes software used by intelligence agencies.
Companies like Palantir want to trumpet the work they do for agencies, but often that work is classified. That tension results in some of Washington's most confounding advertisements.
"They baffle me, to be honest," says Angel Bennett, who handled some intelligence accounts before becoming director of marketing for Flir Systems, which makes infrared imaging systems. "Most of the time you can't even send out a press release about the contract you've won."
Many ads aim their message over the heads of ordinary commuters at program managers, congressmen or procurement officers. Sometimes they miss their mark.
Take, for example, a recent advertising campaign by Northrop Grumman. Over a picture of a bombed-out city neighborhood, its subway ad read: "By the time you've identified the threat, we've already taken it out of the picture." In the lower, right-hand corner, a single clue: ISR.
The ad sparked a rash of online discussion.
"I still don't even get what they mean," wrote one commenter under the name Gulliver. "Who is the "you"? And who is the "we"?…Can anyone make any sense out of the slogan?"
"We don't tell the whole story" in our ads, says Randy Belote, a Northrop Grumman spokesman. "We let the reader try to determine what's going on."
Ordinary citizens who are baffled by Washington's ads can take comfort in the fact that people targeted by these ads sometimes don't understand them, either.
"ISR? I'm not sure on that," says Allan Burman, a former administrator of the Office of Management and Budget's Office of Federal Procurement Policy.
What about WITS 3? "Is that a network exchange?" he asks. "I have no idea."
And how about UAV? "That's an unmanned aerial vehicle," he says, triumphantly.
That still doesn't explain the ad on the bus. It turns out to be for a company called Mission Essential Personnel, which provides translators and analysts for the U.S. defense and intelligence communities.
The company plastered its puzzling ads over 235 buses in the area, it says, to draw attention to its unspecified services for the government. "Obviously, you don't get everything on the side of the bus as it goes by at 35 mph," says Chris Taylor, the company's chief executive.
But he says the campaign helped get the company noticed around Washington.
"I got emails from friends saying: 'I almost got hit by an MEP bus!" he says.
This article was really interesting to me. I have never heard of advertisers specially excluding people, but for advertisers in Washington, that seems to be the case. I wonder if there is also the psychological aspect, where those who understand the ads feel more privelaged and therefore more likely to remember the advertisement.
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