Mobile Marketing

I've always found trams rather exotic and romantic in a continental sort of way. Here in Frankfurt, the trams are a rather lurid shade of turquoise but this almost adds to their charm. It's certainly not a shade of paintwork you'd choose for your own car.

I love the way trams glide past you when you're sitting in a traffic jam on the Hanauer Landstrasse or somewhere. And even better than the standard aqua issue are the trams in full advertising regalia. There's one I see regularly done up like hundreds of Maggi enamel signs and I saw a real beauty today: a Lufthansa tram with a clouds and sky artwork to rival that of Michelangelo (well, almost). Maybe there's something not quite right about an airline pushing its wares via an older and more mundane form of transport but as I watched it serenely sailing past, I didn't really care. This streetcar evoked exactly the "consumer response" that I'm sure was desired.