No to demographic change.
NO
NO.
Was the reason they stopped advertising due to copyright/trademark issues?
Was their product confused with a similar product?
Was this a local business?
Were they relying on word of mouth to get business?
Did they do something, or provide something, the customers would come back for repeatedly:
- More often than once a week?
- More often than once a month?
- More often than once a year?
Were their customers other businesses, primarily?
Or just everyday home consumers?
Keep 'em coming.
Would it have been 100% legal to continue advertising the way they had been, but they figured — correctly, as it turns out — that, no, they’d get better results by dropping the ads they’d been running, and starting up no new ads?
Was this one of those multilevel marketing things?
Was the service something you wouldn’t want other people to know you were buying?
Yes, everything you just said is correct.
No, thank goodness. I hate those scams!
NO**.**
Did dropping ads change the way their customer’s perceived the quality or value of the product?
Did this allow them to do anything else with their business plan, like reduce prices, improve service, expand other aspects of the operation?
Were their ads thought to be poorly received and they figured no ads are better than bad ads?
I’m stumped at the moment, but I just wanted to call dibs on posing the next puzzle.
Keep 'em coming.
You got it.
Did they sell one specific product? One category of products? A variety of products? Is this a physical store? A manufacturer? A restaurant?
Are they still around?
Did they advertise a lot before they decided to stop? Did they have memorable ads?
Keep 'em coming.
Well, there goes my guess that it was AYDS…
I’ve heard of that and no, that isn’t it.
Was it a store-brand line of products, that the store actually advertised for a while and sold respectably well against national-brand competitors on their shelves, and then the national brands said, look, it’ll be worth your while to Knock That The Hell Off, are we clear?
Nope.
Was the advertising actually having a negative effect?
Was it Strand cigarettes?
Did volume of sales (as measured in amount of product) increase after the cessation of ads?
Did the per-unit price of the product increase?
Was the success entirely due to the decrease in expense, due to not paying for advertising?
Was there some other, non-marketing, expense that decreased, along with the cessation of ads?
Keep 'em coming.