Today Sat Sun
It is forcast to be Mostly Cloudy at 10:00 PM EST on February 10, 2012
Mostly Cloudy
4°/-8°		 It is forcast to be Chance of Snow at 10:00 PM EST on February 11, 2012
Chance of Snow
-2°/-3°		 It is forcast to be Chance of Snow at 10:00 PM EST on February 12, 2012
Chance of Snow
2°/-5°

18 Comments

news

TTC Ad Campaign Highlights Good Old-Fashioned Elbow Grease

By Patrick Metzger

2008_06_14_clean_ttc_small.jpg
The new TTC ad campaign is doubly noble of purpose—it doesn’t just encourage us to keep the system tidy, but engages in a little social engineering by depicting workers and riders marching hand in hand towards a glorious trash-free future, emotionally unhindered by grudges or memories of the late unpleasantness.
In the ad above, the passenger is doing her duty, placing her newspaper carefully in her purse until a suitable receptacle for disposal can be found. Nearby, a TTC worker appropriately garbed in safety vest and gloves is engaged in what presumably is his principal employment of picking up litter. Note however, his technique—each item of trash is selected individually with the left hand, then transferred to the right hand for temporary storage. While we can’t know with certainty the next steps in the process, it seems likely that once both hands are full, the cleaner will have to walk to the nearest bin and dump his cargo before returning for another load.
The question then, is why is this worker so singularly ill-equipped for his task? Does the same Luddite streak that keeps the TTC from implementing fare cards also bar employees from using more modern tools like a broom and a bag, or cartoon-style stick with a nail on the end? Or is this apparently hyper-manual process not intended to be taken literally, but to be interpreted as a symbolic representation of the virtue of diligence? Or are we just overthinking this whole thing?
Photos by Patrick Metzger.

Filed under: , , ,

Report error Send a tip

Comments

  • xtremesniper

    Dude, you’re looking way too into this simple public service announcement.
    All it’s saying is you do your duty, and they’ll do theirs. It has to look nice and eye catching. Have you ever seen the bags that those employees carry around to toss garbage in? It’s not exactly the kind of thing you’d want to put into a spick-and-span clean ad like this one.
    The point is the employee is cleaning up those seats. Not many people will look any further into it than that.

  • Rajio

    hat is wrong with depicting a service worker bending over to pick up litter? wtf torontoist, are you seriously looking for sensationalism here?
    would you rather him use a broom to clean a bench? or maybe one of those deisel sidewalk-litter-vacuum-cars? wow. get over it. he’s picking up litter. thats not so bad. look for scandal elsewhere.

  • Adam Sobolak

    Those ads are sooo “Goofus and Gallant”.

  • lethalandyoung

    Wah Wah Wah.
    Slow news day or what?

  • David Topping

    This is exactly how I pick up and collect trash at my other job. And I don’t even wear heavy-duty gloves!

  • Robsonian

    I’d love to see someone photoshop a surly, heavyset old dude in greasy overalls with a large canvas garbage collection bag and the stump of an old broom picking up trash and glaring malevolently into the eye of the camera into this add.

  • Patrick Metzger

    For the record, I wasn’t really driven into a white-hot fury by this ad, I just used a serious tone because it was more fun to write that way. Slow news day just about covers it.
    That said, it’s a lousy ad because it’s obvious and dull. It’s socialist realism without the style or charisma.

  • Gloria

    Style and charisma? We’re talking TTC here. The last time they “tried”, we ended up with pig masks and ads swiped from the MTA. I’m OK with settling for bland and obvious for now.

  • BoAd

    Anyone else notice how every single photo is from Downsview? I mean, I’m all for Faywoodian elitism, but has this gone too far?

  • iantri

    Lousy ad? I don’t know, its not interesting but its reasonably competant, and its well-photographed relative to everything I’ve seen before from the TTC.
    All I’ve got to complain about is strange typographical treatment of the word “together”.
    (Typically, they suffer from awful lighting/poses. Yes, I’m thinking of the awful Special Constables ad with people awkwardly posed conversing with the special constables or the “stand well back” at with the people at attention lined against the wall.)

  • Svend

    Read the label.
    Elbow grease isn’t used for picking up garbage, I save it for when I’m scrubbing the floor on my hands and knees.

  • rek

    1) Was this ad also copied from the New York subway?
    2) Why does the woman have to store the paper until she finds a recycling bin? Why isn’t there a bin nearby? Isn’t that really the cause of wanton littering in stations and vehicles, the lack of handy receptacles? Whose fault is that?

  • Wade Vroom

    I agree with iantri. When I first saw the ads, I thought that it was a good use of white space and well photographed. Compared to some of their other campaigns, this one is pretty good.
    Speaking of other campaigns, the TTC has a new super hero series. One for the woman who uses tokens, one for the guy who car pool. It is an environmental thing. I think it is a rip off of the Lottery campaign OLG super heroes. (The Splurger). Well designed though.

  • Patrick Metzger

    I think a case could possibly be made that the execution here is better than the series where TTC cops and riders stare uncomfortably at each other, but they’re still extremely weak on concept.
    I haven’t seem the superhero ads, but the OLG ones drive me crazy.

  • Gloria

    I have to say: it’s an ad meant to tell people to pick up after themselves. I’m sure there could be a better “concept,” and it’s always good to reach higher, but … why?
    I’d hate to think the TTC was holding lengthy design meetings (“come on, people, *concept*!”) for a simple PSA about litter when they could just whip up something simple and straightforward like this.
    If they were trying to market themselves (say, as the Better Way), I’d definitely expect something more memorable.

  • beth maher

    I agree, the ad is not that bad actually.
    Clean, typographically simple, nice use of photography and white space, subtle touch of display type, symmetrically balanced. It’s not genius, but it’s aesthetically pleasing.
    This post is pure nitpicking
    Also, has anyone noticed that there are some ads going up (I think they’re for the family pass) that actually seem to utilize Toronto Subway Regular?
    It seems there might be one person in the TTC graphic design department that knows what’s up… Although I think there’s like 7 different typefaces used in the ad, so I say that very loosely.

  • panko

    Maybe, just maybe, he’s picking the items one by one because they are sortable into different kinds of recyclables and trash?
    Anyway, it’s a simple reminder to pick up after oneself and that if you on’t someone will have to do it for you. Period.

  • Sammy

    “Anyone else notice how every single photo is from Downsview? I mean, I’m all for Faywoodian elitism, but has this gone too far?”
    The irony is that the Faywood bus goes to Wilson Station.