Do not ask me why I was up, but late last night on the TRAV channel I saw them air a commercial which made me look twice. Including scenes from the golden spike at Promontory it switched to the brand new ES loco saying something to the effect that the new GE locos are much cleaner.

I suppose this is some sort of parallel to the drug companies advertising to the consumer when only a doctor can spec prescription medications. But this is certainly much removed from that - how many of us are expected to call one of the six or so railroads left that can afford one of these new locos, and INSIST they buy a GE?

Bob Kutella

This is part of a larger advertising campaign. In the past 7-10 days, GE has had both pop-up and roll-over advertisments on both the Yahoo ! home page as well as CNN's home page. I'm sure there must be others.

What I've taken from the ads is two things,
1) The obvious advertising of product and,
2) There appears to be something of a PR campaign going on as well, aimed at getting out the environmental advantages of their newer technologies.

Thinking about it, these seems to be good marketing sense. Certainly ad placement on the internet has to be relatively inexpensive compared to commercial/prime time television. One would imagine it has similar potential "exposure" numbers. I would guess cable TV runs a close second in economies versus exposure. (Again, compared to network TV)