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Many wonder if free advertising is an effective way for their website to get exposure. Contrary to what you might think, there is not an easy answer to this question.

We know that advertising on television can be effective as well as radio advertising. We have seen many people use free advertising on classified websites that have had no success. On the other hand, we have also seen many others that have had tremendous success using free website advertising.

The issue that must come to head and be addressed with any advertising (whether free or not) is writing good ad copy and by making sure that you are selling your target audience what it needs or wants.

One of the biggest reasons free advertising, as well as paid advertising, does not work for some is because most advertisers fail to send a clear and precise advertising message to their potential prospects. Make sure your advertisement is clear and concise. Your free ad must be “catchy” as most people do not enjoy reading or having to decipher through hundreds of different ads. Good advertising will be delivered best through high impact with a short message.

As with any type of advertising, a big key to free ads are to have your advertisements exposed on many websites at once. You’ve probably heard the saying before, “the more hits you get, the more sales you get.” Many free advertising websites give you the option of upgrading to be featured on their site and many times it is at a very low cost (sometimes as low as $10). We have utilized these and found that our websites were getting about 7-10 more hits compared to just the free advertising without the upgrade.

Here’s the bottom line: radio advertising works, newspaper advertising works, television advertising works, AND free advertising works… all advertising can be very effective if utilized correctly.

By: Brian McCoy

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According to an April 2006 issue of the New Scientist, research has proven that subliminal advertising messages work… and that if conditions are right, subliminal advertising to promote a brand can be made to work.

Previous experiments claiming this were debunked. But in a recent experiment, scientists found that eighty per cent of volunteers who had been exposed to the subliminal advertising message chose that product, compared to only 20 per cent of the controls. Those are scary stats indeed.

The term “subliminal message” was popularized in 1917 (World War I), when the US army would sneak messages into songs and put subliminal messages in posters trying to get people to join the army.

A subliminal message is defined as a signal or message designed to pass below the normal limits of perception. Subliminal messages target the subconscious mind and may be generated in the form of an image transmitted briefly and not perceived consciously and yet perceived unconsciously.

While the conscious, rational mind acts as a filter and screens out messages not consistent with our beliefs, the subconscious mind accepts messages without filtering them – rather like the mind of a child.

The effects of subliminal television advertising could be even more powerful on children. It’s been found that for each additional hour per day that a child watched television an average of one additional request was made for an advertised product.

But then it doesn’t take a scientist to tell us what most parents know anyway. Most of us have experienced pester-power first-hand.

The researchers also found that priming only works when the prime is goal-relevant. In plain English, this means you’re likely to buy a product that quenches your thirst only if you were already thirsty anyway.

So, subliminal messages could be more useful in priming a target audience to choose one brand over another, rather than in creating an actual need for the product.

What if politicians started using it to influence our choices? Well, it’s very likely they do already.

Do subliminal messages violate the code of advertising? Will this change the way advertising is regulated? How could we detect subliminal messages inserted into creatives?

And, in our opinion, what is “wrong” – the fact that they actually work, or that advertisers would be sneaky enough to use them?

But far better uses have been found for subliminal messages than advertising. In personal transformation, for instance.

As we learn more about the way our mind works, it will become clearer how subliminal messages really affect our decisions and whether they should or should not be allowed in advertising.

By: Priya Shah

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The £500,000 Honda waste of money on “live” television advertising is perhaps, the final straw in the acceptance of advertising as a means of “communicating” with consumers.

Our unwillingness to admit to the huge failings of advertising are reflected in our business institutions suffering from a loss of nerve to admit that advertising has become a total travesty, and amount to a national moral funk. We have let advertising standards fall in almost everything and especially in understanding the true meaning of the word communication.

Our claims that “advertising works” reflect an unwillingness to look rather more closely at the “evidence” touted by the various bodies representing advertising (and media) self interest!

It would appear that sometimes a decision taken by Media/Agency/Client is so lacking in common sense that the only appropriate reaction is to bang one’s head against a brick wall. However a blinkered advertising campaign, such as Hondas’, is so bad that the outcome can be truly toxic. There are more and more grotesque examples of such decisions, decisions lacking in any knowledge of the communications process, emerging as advertisers try to cut through the clutter, attract consumers’ attention etc.

I guarantee that the £500,000 could have been far more effectively spent with total accountability. All is revealed in my book “Television killed advertising” out end September.

Advertising people don’t understand the real world, they don’t understand the meaning of the word “communication”, and with the decision to split the creative role and the media role, there has been a proliferation of “experts” who still don’t understand communication. Between them issues forth a startling amount of opinions as to what constitutes “good” advertising, never for once realising that there is no such thing. Advertising people are subhuman living in a fantasy world in which communications can be controlled by “creativity” and supposedly sophisticated readership/viewing habits can instruct customers to read./watch their advertisements…they don’t of course! The world we live in is vastly different from the world they think we live in.

Perhaps the change to reality is already starting! “US retailer quits TV for instore promotions”! Although only a casuist would draw hard and fast conclusions from such sparse data, it isn’t good news for the US TV industry that a major retailer like Gap boosted its bottom line after quitting the medium in favour of instore merchandising for several successive quarters.

The switch trimmed 18% off the firm’s marketing expenditure during its most recent quarter, contributing to a 40% year-on-year leap in profits.

So…no more retreat, let us rediscover the true meaning of communication and then start to provide our clients with the sort of marketing communication they deserve in the 21st Century.

Advertising has set no standards for the effective, accountable marketing communication of products/services matched only by the total lack of relentless curiosity! The history of advertising is also one of constant rejection towards anything that questioned the supremacy of advertising, despite the fact that the alternative on offer was substantially more effective and less expensive than advertising itself.

1. In a nutshell: marketing as we know it is a construct of the last century or so. Markets, on the other hand, have been around for thousands of years.

2. Interactive communication is not the same as online/digital. Truly interactive is “letting customers into the heart of your business”

3. In markets (as opposed to marketing) the sale was merely the exclamation mark at the end of the sentence. The rest was conversation and relationship.

4.”Listen. Measure. Respond.”

5. “Why” is more important than “how”.

6. At the farmer’s market, the farmers let you taste the fruit. How can your customers “taste your fruit”?

So let us define Interactive Marketing communication. Interaction can be defined simply as straightforward communication between two parties. Presently we are in danger of losing the real meaning of interaction, as we tend to focus discussions on the emerging technologies and neglect the communication process itself.

With an understanding of the real meaning of Interactive Communication, existing media can be made interactive, and subsequently far more cost effective.

Interactive Marketing Communication turns passive advertising into active advertising and actually alters behaviour during the communication and learning process.

In my book “Television killed advertising” to be published end September 2008, I detail just how much more effective

Interactive communication is when compared to conventional advertising and details the results of a research investment in excess of £5 m.



By: Paul Ashby

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