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Business & Economy Briefs

Photo by Eric Jackson

Silent testimony about an advertising industry failure

What you see here is the apparent conclusion of a story that The Panama News covered at its inception. Behind that athletic shoe ad is the country's largest video screen, now unused for that purpose.

What happened? Many things, apparently.

At its inauguration Mayor Navarro and all manner of dignitaries from the advertising industry were on hand to celebrate, but The Panama News got few serious answers to the questions it posed to promoters about the marketing theory behind the screen, what research went into the project and how the facility was intended to be used. Mainly it was a show of hipness by wealthy youngsters from elite families with important political connections: they had a new toy and they expected it to bring in a lot of money and become one of the principal landmarks of this country's capital city.

Later, we saw the sign used mainly for television ads that were designed to go with sound. One would think that whenever Mariano Rivera was pitching it would be shown on the Via España screen, and that during Panama City's Carnival the device would be used to show scenes from other celebrations around the country. However, that sort of common sense promotion of the medium itself was rarely done.

The screen was installed atop what was then the Figali ladies' wear store, but Jean Figali closed that business to pursue his notorious boondoggle on the Amador Causeway.

That particular stretch of Via España is fairly dangerous, as buses are maneuvering to get in and out of the stop in front of Plaza Concordia and it causes stop-and-go traffic right at the spot where drivers were expected to take their eyes off the road to look at the TV screen.

For awhile Swatch was running ads on the screen, but eventually advertisers decided that all the prestige of dealing with the ad cartel didn't make the purchase of advertising on the huge Via España video screen worth the investment.

Almost certainly, high electricity rates worked against the economic success of this project.

The experience symbolizes many thing, including:

• The usual incompetence of monopolies in general and of Panama's advertising agencies cartel in particular

• The foolishness of inappropriate applications of technology, which in part flows from a tendency to blindly trust in anything dubbed "modern" that runs right through the Panamanian culture

• Another typical failure of our self-proclaimed elites to do their homework, either in school or on the job

• The underdeveloped state of the arts and sciences of business research and planning in Panama