business idea #1

business idea #1:
street lamp advertising

lately, i've been pondering over the prospect of quitting my job and starting my own business. one random night, while cruising down a random road, randomly watching street lamps whisk past one by one, a random thought popped into my mind: why aren't there any advertisements on these poles?

i'm not talking about pasting flyers with pathetic little cut-out strips of contact numbers promoting tuition classes or room vacancies - i'm thinking corporate advertisements, like those JC Decaux poster boards we always see at the bus stops.

give it some thought: what if i could convince LTA (or whoever owns those lamps) to allow me the rights to affix and manage similar poster boards on the lamp posts? subsequently, what if i could convince the big guns (Apple, Pepsi, Nike, Sony, Nokia, Adidas, etc) to stick their ads on said boards? finally, what should i buy with my new-found millions? okay. back to the harshness of reality.

an established firm would probably outbid me for the tender, and they'd tweak it a bit and shamelessly market the idea as their own invention - internationally, no less. their rivals would then attempt to grab a slice of the deliciously lucrative pie i baked, by which time street lamp adverts would be a global phenomenon, and the market would become overly saturated and it becomes a run-of-the-mill aspect of commercial advertising. eventually i'd end up as a loser who can only helplessly sigh about what might have been, if only my daddy was filthy rich.

oh well. i guess i'd better stick to my current job. i believe, however, that one day, someone will make this happen, and it'll either be yours truly, the visionary entrepreneur, or it won't. whatever it is, you guys better remember where you saw it first.

ps: ad agencies out there, if you feel i have what it takes to be your marketing or creative director, please don't hesitate to let me know.. expected salary: $2mil p.a., negotiable. email: gregory.zheng@gmail.com