Have you considered indoor billboards (also known as “restroom advertising”)?

I recently designed posters to be used as “ads” inside of public restrooms—posters to hang on doors or walls in strategic bathroom locations.

We’ve all seen them, right? For us females who spend more time inside bathroom stalls with the doors shut, we can’t miss seeing these kinds of messages.

In my case, I designed the restroom posters for the marketing director at a regional hospital. The posters were her idea and a really good one, in my opinion.

Here’s how it worked: I designed very large posters that slip inside economical, sturdy poster frames (the frames pretty much fill up the width of the stall door.) The posters were printed locally and inexpensively; we printed a few of each poster topic. Every now and then we’ll change out the older posters for new topics.

In an organization as big as a hospital, it’s easy to forget that you can, and should, market directly to your own employees.

With hundreds or even thousands of employees, not only should employees be aware of what their organization has to offer, they frequently are consumers of the hospital’s healthcare services, as well. And if the hospital is doing its job well, their employees should be the best spokespeople for what they have to offer.

So the marketing director’s idea of advertising, via bathroom stalls, to the hospital’s employees (as well as visitors) makes a lot of sense.

There aren’t many places left in our over-busy, multi-tasking society where you can find a captive audience with undivided viewing attention. But you’ll find them in a public bathroom.

As mentioned on the American Restroom Association web page (who knew?), “toilets don’t have remote controls.”

And you know exactly who you’re reaching.

“With media becoming more fragmented, advertisers are looking for a more targeted way to reach their customers,” says Jim Arabanos, president of AJ Indoor Advertising Inc., of the growing market. “If you look at a specific restaurant or bar, you know the age and income demographics that go there. Indoor advertising is a vehicle that can be targeted right down to the pinhead. You know exactly who you’re reaching.”

In advertising, no venue is sacred or off limits any more.

Whether you see this as a good or bad trend, advertising messages are found everywhere; this trend shows no sign of diminishing. We have product placement in movies and in tv shows, ads on bus/subway exteriors, on park benches, on our Google home pages…and in our private bathroom moments.