Window Cleaners: Australia & Japan

Highly strung workers give building a clean face: The State Government Offices were gleaming like a new penny after a spruce-up yesterday by a team of window cleaners from Melbourne. Hanging high above the street, the team of six from Metropolitan Window Cleaning, was completely in its element. Although the SGO is one of Ballarat's largest buildings it wasn't enough to faze these cleaners. As team member Keiran McCosker pointed out, they have worked on buildings of 33 storeys in Melbourne's CBD. "When you get really high up you can get the heebe-geebes, especially on an all-glass building, but on a building this size, even though you could hurt yourself if you fell, there is a sense of security," Mr McCosker said.
To be a high-rise window cleaner Mr McCosker completed a twin rope method course at Homesglen TAFE for five days. "A lot of people don't make it through the course as it is pretty intensive and you need to be pretty fit," he said. According to Mr McCosker, people are always asking him and his colleagues the same questions about their occupation. "People always want to know if you can come to their house next and what's in your water." Having to work up high out in the open has many challenges but Mr McCosker has some good advice: "Woollen thermal underwear - I swear by it." Pictured above: Window cleaner Adrian Kuhl hard at work at the State Government Offices in Ballarat yesterday.

Branded window washers on skyscrapers: It’s doubtful whether “Window Cleaning Media” will become a 5% medium across the world but this case study takes its brand message to high-flyers in Japan. Northwest Airlines needed to promote its new seats in World Business Class that now allow passengers to recline by as much as 176 degrees, just four degrees off the optimum goal of a perfectly flat bed. Northwest is the third-largest air carrier in Japan and largest international airline operating in the country and it needed to boost its business passengers. MindShare in Japan appropriated space on the window-side of the cleaning platform – for Northwest Airlines. What better way to reach businessmen cheaply and effectively at their place of work?




The MindShare platforms were seen on a number of office buildings in the Otemachi and Akasaka areas of Toyko, selected on the basis of their occupants. Tenants included Cisco and NTT DoCoMo. The new medium – a first for Japan – enabled Northwest Airlines to intrude on an executive’s working day, an environment that’s relatively ad free, and surprise them, thus making the ad more memorable. After all, how many business executives wouldn’t want an office chair that could recline to 176 degrees, particularly after a big lunch. The idea is a cost-effective solution, and one that could be exported to many other markets.