The advertising agency of the future will have to adapt to the changing ways of the business world. Instead of distinguishing themselves between specific disciplines, such as just a public relations agency, or just a direct mail advertiser, or just an outdoor advertising agency, or billboard advertising agency to get even more specific, advertising agencies of the future will have to broaden their horizons. They will have to become full on all-solutions marketing companies. A recent post on a great blog called Actionable Insights by Covario explains in full detail why a simple advertising agency may be a thing of the past. In the future, a marketing solutions company will be the answer to a business's problems.
Paris Hilton has threatened legal action against a billboard advertising company who suggested that she was 'vacant'.
A New Zealand company plastered her face across a roadside billboard advertising free billboard space.
Paris Hilton is threatening to sue the company, Media5, over the photo of her used to promote free billboard advertising space, with the suggestion that she is vacant.
Her manager, Jamie Freed, claims the company does not have permission to use the picture and insisted to local media that the star plans to settle the matter in court.
Spokesperson for Media5, Adam McGregor described the advert as 'a bit of fun'.
Paris has a proven ability to laugh at herself,' he said. 'We assume that the agency has taken care of the rights to the image of Paris, but we will ask the question. We're not trying to offend anyone.'
He said that if Hilton's lawyers asked for her image to be removed from the billboard, the company would probably oblige.
Earlier this year, Woody Allen received £3million in damages for the unauthorized use of his image in a billboard advertising campaign for clothing giant American Apparel.
Sao Paulo has now joined in the anti-outdoor advertising parade. The city of Sao Paulo, Brazil has banned billboard advertising, flashing neon signs, and electronic scrolling panels. As a result, fierce debate has sparked among the city's inhabitants.
City planners, architects, and environmental advocates have hailed the new legislation as bringing the city "one step closer to an imagined urban ideal" as they applaud the banning of visual pollution. One columnist calls it a "rare victory of the public interest over private, of order over disorder, aesthetics over ugliness, of cleanliness over trash".
On the other hand, however, advertisers and business groups oppose the decision. They say that free expression will be inhibited, jobs will be lost, and consumers will have less information about which products to buy. They argue that the availability of information is the essence of capitalism and consumer culture.
The new law also places rules on store signs and even on mobile outdoor advertising, such as on the side of a bus, or banners on airplanes and blimps. A court called the law unconstitutional because the federal government controls airspace, not the city government.
Popular reaction to the legislation has generally been very supportive, as the bill passed by with a whopping 45 to 1 vote. However, full service ad agencies and marketing companies fear that the legislation will profoundly negatively affect them, ultimately causing a loss in revenue and by extension, employment. There are 13,000 billboards that have been installed illegally, but the advertising agencies argue that they are merely scapegoats, and the real blame lies with another entity, possibly corrupt government officials taking bribes.
Last time I talked about addressing your prospects' problems through relevant direct mail messaging. This time I will talk about using direct mail advertising and email advertising together to drive up response rates.
Because of the recession, some people have been discontinuing their direct mail campaigns because they think it is not cost effective enough. However, as an automotive ad agency, a retail advertising agency, and a professional services advertising agency, we like to think that we know what we're talking about. We know that the real metric we should be looking at is not just investment cost, but ROI. According to the experts, direct mail followed up by an email has a much higher ROI than either form of communication alone when running an integrated marketing campaign. Direct mail by itself also has a higher ROI with business-to-business when running a single faceted campaign.
The reasons for this are as follows. Most of the time, direct mail lists are alot cleaner than email advertising lists. Also, generally speaking, people are more accepting of unsolicited mail than they are of unsolicited email. After all, it's much more likely to open up an email and get a computer virus than it is to open up some mail and get an actual virus. Next, for business-to-business, direct mail is still delivered even if the prospect is no longer with the company. Email addresses, on the other hand, are usually turned off when a person leaves an organization. Think of all the people that got laid off in the recession and how many email addresses must have been turned off. Lastly, direct mail is subject to an infinite amount of creative possibilities, whereas something like print advertising, television advertising, or billboard advertising always has to follow a certain preset format. Even email advertising has to follow a specific template most of the time. But direct mail advertising is only limited by your own creativity.
Direct mail is a great way to increase your b-to-b clientele, especially as part of an integrated marketing campaign. And because of the recession, the cost for direct mail has actually gone down. Use direct mail to start a conversation with your prospects; follow up that conversation with an email; direct that prospect to your online assets; and finish the conversation with a sale.
Many US state governments, and even governments of other countries, are now labeling outdoor advertising as "visual pollution". The latest government to ban outdoor advertising based on this label is the city of Chennai in India. However, the city also acknowledged the fact that outdoor advertising plays a vital role in its own income tax revenue and employment rate.
Other governments that have banned outdoor advertising based on the notion that it is "visual pollution" are the state of Maine, the cities of of Sao Paulo, and Los Angeles, which recently upheld its ban in a courtroom decision against a media group. Auckland, New Zealand, and parts of South Africa are also following suit and are pursuing bans on outdoor advertising.
Outdoor advertising, and more specifically billboard advertising, are integral parts of media for many advertisers. Billboard advertising is also vital in supporting the print advertising part of the industry.
While it is completely understandable that a local government would want to ban the potential alcohol or cigarette billboard near a school, it is also necesarry to understand that billboard advertising can serve positive social endeavors, such as aiding in finding missing persons. Everything has a pro and con, and outdoor advertising is no different.
But legislators are increasingly siding with the cons side of the argument. And once digital billboard advertising becomes the norm, legislators may lead an outright crusade against outdoor advertising, labeling it not only as "visual pollution", but also as a "traffic distraction".
The bans on outdoor advertising will have profound consequences for the advertising industry. Revenue streams will drop, which of course will cause unemployment to increase. Let's just hope that legislators don't take an extremist stance on the issue and make unemployment worse than it already is.
As a way of keeping up with modern times, we have expanded our traditional media efforts into the world of online marketing. We still adhere to the same principles, except we've transposed those principles onto another medium, the internet. As a result, we're not only a traditional media advertising agency, but we're also online marketing consultants. So we not only handle things such as television and radio advertising, outdoor and billboard advertising, and print advertising, but we also handle website design, website development, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, and of course email advertising. Just as we can create beautiful and colorful print ads for your business, we can also create beautiful and colorful websites, landing pages, and email blasts for your business. We'll also run blogging campaigns for your business both as a form of public relations and as a means of getting you indexed on major search engines.
We'll run your online marketing campaign for you! Call us at 877-876-2995, or visit our website, or our other blog.
Have you ever been driving down some mysterious highway looking for a place to eat to satisfy your terminal hunger?Then you pass one of those huge outdoor advertising displays that says “Eat At Joe’s” and you think to yourself, “I would love to eat at Joe’s right this second.”Those billboards have a way of reading our minds, don’t they?
Billboard advertising is a great way to let your customer find you, instead of you having to find your customer.There's over 450,000 billboards across the 4,000,000 miles of highway in the country. Think of all that billboard advertising can do for you. We can create numerous memorable billboard ads so thousands, or even millions if it’s in a city, of potential customers can be directed to your business. And we don't just do New Jersey billboard advertising, we do billboard advertising all over the country!
Want your business up on a billboard? Call us! 877-876-2995.
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