The classic example around here is a Houston urologist who does vasectomy reversals. He rents billboards well out of town and uses the message “MICROSURGICAL VASECTOMY REVERSAL – MONEY BACK GUARANTEE: 1-713-REVERSE.” It’s simple and easily remembered.
I’m sure that’s true. But if you’re NOT aware of a brand, you DEFINITELY won’t buy it. (For products which are not simply commodities – where it’s not simply the cheapest price rules.) There have been cases where well-known brands, top sellers, stopped advertising, figuring they didn’t need to spend the money. After a while, the public forgot about them, and their sales plummeted.
Ed
Most people are stupid. Most people buy either Coke or Pepsi. Advertising has been proven to work or else companies wouldn’t have created the mulyi billion dollar industry. Just because some people are smart enough to buy no name cola’s doesn"t make advertising (billboards in paticular) money spent wasted and ineffective.
Cite?
IME you have it backwards. In my businesses market, people tend to equate cheap generic adverting with fly by night poorly run shops.
Considering we average about $100 for every person who comes in and most of our new customers come from phone books, justifying a $600-$1000per month phone book ad is not very hard. When my biz gets a little bigger I will be looking for billboard space.
I don’t know what “at the time” means here, but it can’t have been at the same time the Millard Fillmore campaign ran in New Jersey – I saw that about 20-30 years ago in NJ, well before the Internet was around to count hits.
(Yeah, I know about the early roots on the net. Don’t give me grief over it – they wouldn’t be recording hits from universities and military bases.)