Hotlanta buses glow with techno-ads

From NPR's Morning Edition today:

Morning Edition, March 19, 2007 · There are a dozen buses on the streets of Atlanta wrapped with a new material called glow skin, which gives the ads on the sides of the bus a whole new look.

"You just see this glowing type coming toward you," says Clyde Good, advertising director for real estate company Remax of Georgia. "You rarely see the bus. There's just this message that's floating in the black space toward you."

At the North Springs transit station, Supervisor Charles Sherman answers questions about the bus routes. As riders wait in this large bus pick-up area, just off of a busy highway, many here including Rajeeb Acharya, say they like the idea.

"That is very attractive. Somebody cannot miss it," he says. "If I had a business I would do that."

Another passenger, Brandon Cotton, hopes to see more of the new advertising for a very practical reason.

"A lot of times, there's not many lights on the street at night, so you can actually see the bus coming to you," he says.

The U.S. military developed electroluminescent lighting for use in air strips and to highlight instrument panels on Black Hawk helicopters. It's been used all over the country on snow plows, tractors and construction equipment, to help avoid accidents. It's being used on some billboards. A few days after Atlanta started doing this, the city of Portland followed suit carrying an ad for a giant beverage company on some of its buses.