Bus Adver­tis­ing

Con­tact:

Jeff Marsel­la
Region­al Account Man­ag­er
Mes­mer­ize Tran­sit
317.966.5581
jeff@​mesmerize.​com

Adver­tis­ing Policy:

The City of Mar­i­on Tran­sit Sys­tem (MTS) has adopt­ed the fol­low­ing pol­i­cy regard­ing all

adver­tise­ments on its bus­es and facilities:

Adver­tis­ing Pol­i­cy – City of Mar­i­on, Indi­ana Tran­sit Sys­tem (MTS)

The City of Mar­i­on Trans­porta­tion Depart­ment, a/​k/​a Mar­i­on Tran­sit Sys­tem (MTS), here­inafter referred to as ​“MTS” has estab­lished the fol­low­ing pol­i­cy for adver­tise­ments in/​on its pub­lic facil­i­ties and bus­es to define the cat­e­gories of adver­tis­ing that will and will not be accept­ed in/​on its pub­licly financed bus­es and pas­sen­ger facilities.

Pur­pose. It is the goal and the inten­tion of the MTS that its bus­es shall con­sti­tute a view­point-neu­tral forum and that all adver­tis­ing on or in its bus­es shall be sub­ject to this uni­form, view­point-neu­tral pol­i­cy that is here­by adopt­ed for the fol­low­ing reasons:

1. MTS’s pri­ma­ry pur­pose in allow­ing adver­tis­ing in and on its bus­es is to gen­er­ate rev­enue received from advertisers.

2. MTS is con­cerned that pay­ing adver­tis­ers may be reluc­tant to place their adver­tise­ments with MTS if required to share the adver­tis­ing forum with adver­tise­ments con­tain­ing mate­r­i­al relat­ing to polit­i­cal, reli­gious, social, and pub­lic issues about which pub­lic opin­ions can be wide­ly divergent.

3. MTS is con­cerned that pay­ing adver­tis­ers might be reluc­tant to place their adver­tise­ments with MTS if required to share the adver­tis­ing forum with adver­tise­ments relat­ing to sub­ject mat­ter that is wide­ly viewed as offen­sive, or inap­pro­pri­ate, or poten­tial­ly harm­ful to the pub­lic includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to users of pub­lic transportation.

4. MTS wish­es to main­tain a posi­tion of neu­tral­i­ty on polit­i­cal, reli­gious, social, and oth­er pub­lic issues, and there­fore, wish­es to avoid any appear­ance that MTS is endors­ing any reli­gion, can­di­date, or view­point on any such issue.

5. MTS wish­es to avoid any risk that accep­tance and dis­play of adver­tis­ing relat­ing to any polit­i­cal, reli­gious, social, or pub­lic issue might con­sti­tute a vio­la­tion of the Estab­lish­ment Clause of the Unit­ed States Constitution.

6. MTS rec­og­nizes that its pas­sen­gers are a cap­tive audi­ence to any adver­tise­ments in or on its bus­es. A num­ber of MTS’s pas­sen­gers have no pub­lic trans­porta­tion alter­na­tives oth­er than MTS’s ser­vice. Many of MTS’s pas­sen­gers are ele­men­tary, junior high, or high school students.

7. MTS desires that its pas­sen­gers not be forced to view adver­tise­ments con­tain­ing mate­r­i­al relat­ing to polit­i­cal, reli­gious, social, and pub­lic issues about which pub­lic opin­ions can be wide­ly diver­gent and which some pas­sen­gers are there­fore like­ly to find offensive.

8. MTS is com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing a safe and order­ly envi­ron­ment for its pas­sen­gers and employ­ees, and to pro­tect­ing its prop­er­ty, and there­fore wish­es to pre­vent the risk of vio­lence gen­er­at­ed by adver­tis­ing mate­r­i­al on or in its buses.

9. MTS wish­es to adopt an adver­tis­ing pol­i­cy that is clear, uni­form, and con­tent-neu­tral so as to avoid, to the max­i­mum extent pos­si­ble, the need for case-by-case inter­pre­ta­tion and appli­ca­tion of the pol­i­cy. Such pol­i­cy min­i­mizes the risk of uncon­sti­tu­tion­al appli­ca­tion of the pol­i­cy while also min­i­miz­ing the need for its admin­is­tra­tion to invest cost­ly time and resources in eval­u­at­ing the appro­pri­ate­ness of any par­tic­u­lar advertisement.

Pol­i­cy. MTS shall accept, dis­play, and main­tain only adver­tise­ments that pro­pose a com­mer­cial trans­ac­tion. Any adver­tise­ment that falls into one or more of the fol­low­ing cat­e­gories is pro­hib­it­ed and shall not be accept­ed, dis­played, or maintained:

1. Non-com­mer­cial, reli­gious, social, and pub­lic issues. The adver­tise­ment does not pro­pose a com­mer­cial trans­ac­tion, and/​or the adver­tise­ment con­tains any direct or indi­rect ref­er­ence to reli­gion, or to any reli­gion, or to any deity or deities, which includes the exis­tence, nonex­is­tence or oth­er char­ac­ter­is­tics of any deity or deities, or to any reli­gious creed, denom­i­na­tion, belief, tenet, or issue relat­ing to (which includes oppos­ing or ques­tion­ing) any reli­gion. This pro­hi­bi­tion shall include the depic­tion of text, sym­bols or images com­mon­ly asso­ci­at­ed with reli­gion or with. any reli­gion, any deity or deities, or any creed, denom­i­na­tion, deity, belief, tenet, cause, or issue relat­ing to (which includes oppos­ing or ques­tion­ing) any religion.

2. Polit­i­cal or elec­toral. The adver­tise­ment con­tains polit­i­cal cam­paign speech refer­ring to a spe­cif­ic bal­lot ques­tion, ini­tia­tive, peti­tion, ref­er­en­dum, can­di­date, or polit­i­cal par­ty or view­point. This pro­hi­bi­tion includes any adver­tise­ment refer­ring to or depict­ing a can­di­date for pub­lic office in any con­text. Pro­vid­ed, how­ev­er, this pro­hi­bi­tion shall not apply to ref­er­ence to, or depic­tion of, a hold­er of pub­lic office who is not a can­di­date for pub­lic office. How­ev­er, in such case, MTS shall reserve the right to require removal of any adver­tise­ment at such time as any per­son referred to or depict­ed in the adver­tise­ment becomes a can­di­date for pub­lic office.

3. Demean­ing or Dis­parag­ing. The adver­tise­ment con­tains mate­r­i­al that can rea­son­ably be viewed as demean­ing or dis­parag­ing an indi­vid­ual, group of indi­vid­u­als or entity.

4. Alco­hol. Tobac­co, or Firearms. The adver­tise­ment depicts, sug­gests, or refers to alco­hol, tobac­co, tobac­co-relat­ed prod­ucts, e‑cigarettes or relat­ed prod­ucts, prod­ucts designed with the pur­pose of being weapons, or firearms, which includes pro­mot­ing or offer­ing in com­merce the sale or use of alco­hol, tobac­co, tobac­co-relat­ed prod­ucts, e‑cigarettes or e‑ci­g­a­rette-relat­ed prod­ucts, prod­ucts designed with the pur­pose of being weapons, or firearms, or firearms-relat­ed products.

5. Vio­lence. The adver­tise­ment con­tains an image or descrip­tion of dead, muti­lat­ed or dis­fig­ured human or ani­mal bod­ies, or the act of killing, muti­lat­ing or dis­fig­ur­ing humans or ani­mals, or inten­tion­al inflic­tion of pain upon a per­son or animal.

6. Unlaw­ful goods or ser­vices. The adver­tise­ment offers, pro­motes, or encour­ages, or appears to offer, pro­mote, or encour­age, the use or pos­ses­sion of unlaw­ful or ille­gal goods or services.

7. Unlaw­ful Con­duct. The adver­tise­ment offers, pro­motes, or encour­ages, or appears to offer; pro­mote, or encour­age, unlaw­ful or ille­gal behav­ior or activities.

8. Pro­fan­i­ty. The adver­tise­ment con­tains pro­fane lan­guage and/​or the appear­ance or sug­ges­tion of pro­fane language.

9. False, mis­lead­ing, or decep­tive adver­tise­ment. The adver­tise­ment con­tains any mate­r­i­al that is false, mis­lead­ing, or deceptive.

10. Libelous speech, copy­right infringe­ment, etc. The adver­tise­ment or any mate­r­i­al con­tained in it is libelous, or an infringe­ment of copy­right, or it oth­er­wise unlaw­ful, ille­gal, or like­ly to sub­ject MTS to litigation.

11. Endorse­ment. The adver­tise­ment or any mate­ri­als con­tained in it declares or implies endorse­ment by MTS of the advertisement.

12. Obscen­i­ty, nudi­ty, or sex­u­al activ­i­ty. The adver­tise­ment depicts, describes, or rep­re­sents nudi­ty or sex­u­al inter­course, or depicts, describes, or rep­re­sents sex­u­al activ­i­ties, human sex­u­al­i­ty or anato­my in a way that the aver­age adult, apply­ing con­tem­po­rary com­mu­ni­ty stan­dards, would find appeals to exces­sive sex­u­al inter­est and is obscene; or, the adver­tise­ment pro­motes the sale of pornog­ra­phy, adult tele­phone or inter­net ser­vices, adult video­tapes, movies or DVD’s, nude or semi-nude estab­lish­ments, adult escort ser­vices, or any oth­er adult enter­tain­ment, estab­lish­ment or forum. This pro­hi­bi­tion includes sex­u­al­ly ori­ent­ed busi­ness­es as described in Mar­i­on, Indi­ana Munic­i­pal Code as it may here­after be amended.

13. Dis­re­gard for Tran­sit Safe­ty. The adver­tise­ment encour­ages or depicts unsafe behav­ior with respect to tran­sit-relat­ed activ­i­ties, such as non-use of nor­mal safe­ty pre­cau­tions in await­ing, board­ing, rid­ing upon, or debark­ing from tran­sit vehicles.

14. Con­sti­tu­tion­al Appli­ca­tion. MTS acknowl­edges that no pol­i­cy can antic­i­pate every issue that might arise, and MTS is com­mit­ted to ensur­ing that appli­ca­tion of this pol­i­cy is view­point-neu­tral and con­sti­tu­tion­al. To that end, MTS reserves the right to allow excep­tions to the pol­i­cy if MTS deter­mines that appli­ca­tion of the pol­i­cy as writ­ten would like­ly be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in any par­tic­u­lar situation.

Admin­is­tra­tion anti Enforce­ment of Policy:

1. Review by MTS Adver­tis­ing Con­trac­tor. MTS shall incor­po­rate this Pol­i­cy and these· pro­ce­dures into its adver­tis­ing man­age­ment con­tracts. MTS’s Adver­tis­ing Con­trac­tor shall review each adver­tise­ment sub­mit­ted for dis­play on or in MTS’s vehi­cles to deter­mine whether or not the adver­tise­ment com­plies with the stan­dards set forth in this Pol­i­cy. If the Con­trac­tor deter­mines that an adver­tise­ment does not com­ply, or may not com­ply, with the stan­dards set forth in this Pol­i­cy, then the Con­trac­tor shall noti­fy the MTS Man­ag­er of the spe­cif­ic stan­dard or stan­dards of this Pol­i­cy with which the Con­trac­tor believes the adver­tise­ment may not comply.

2. Review by MTS Man­ag­er. The Con­trac­tor shall send the adver­tise­ment and sup­port­ing information(the name of the adver­tis­er, the size and num­ber of the pro­posed adver­tise­ments, the dates and loca­tions of pro­posed dis­play, and nota­tion of stan­dards of con­cern) to the MTS Man­ag­er for review. The MTS Man­ag­er shall review the adver­tise­ment and sup­port­ing infor­ma­tion to deter­mine whether or not the adver­tise­ment com­plies with this Pol­i­cy. If the MTS Man­ag­er deter­mines that the adver­tise­ment does not com­ply with this Pol­i­cy, he or she shall, in writ­ing, spec­i­fy the stan­dard or stan­dards of this Pol­i­cy with which the adver­tise­ment does not com­ply, and shall so noti­fy the Contractor.

3. Noti­fi­ca­tion to Adver­tis­er. The Con­trac­tor will send prompt, writ­ten noti­fi­ca­tion to the adver­tis­er of the rejec­tion of the adver­tise­ment and will include in that noti­fi­ca­tion a copy of this Pol­i­cy and writ­ten spec­i­fi­ca­tion of which stan­dard or stan­dards the adver­tise­ment fails to com­ply with.

4. Appeal to Board of Pub­lic Works & Safe­ty. Rejec­tion of an adver­tise­ment may be appealed to the Mar­i­on Board of Pub­lic Works and Safe­ty by writ­ten noti­fi­ca­tion to the MTS Man­ag­er: The MTS Man­ag­er will place the appeal on the next avail­able agen­da for a reg­u­lar meet­ing of the Board. The Board will allow the adver­tis­er and the MTS Man­ag­er to speak and present any evi­dence or argu­ments they wish to offer, and the Board shall make its deci­sion at the con­clu­sion of the meet­ing or at the con­clu­sion of any sub­se­quent meet­ing to which the mat­ter may be continued.