You Just Proved Blog Advertising Works!

You’ve probably seen a similar piece of advertising on benches and other outdoor advertising spaces in your community. It’s intended to be a “gotcha” – you look over at a bench or a bus shelter, and see a message that reads something like:

“You just proved outdoor advertising works!”

This is typically accompanied by a phone number to call to advertise your business in that same space.

Clever...but not true.

Looking at an ad doesn’t mean it “worked”. (Can you remember any of the ads you saw on TV last night – you saw ads on TV, didn’t you? How come they didn’t “work”?)

Getting an ad to “work” takes a lot more than catching a fleeting glance from a passerby. The ad itself would have to be memorable, well targeted, timely, and so on. It needs to be part of a meaningful market position and/or brand message.

There is some irony in these advertising messages. Those who own the advertising space on outdoor signs and benches need to sell it to businesses to make money. So they push the concept that simply owning advertising space for your business is the key to making your advertising work.

Of course once they’ve sold the space, they’ve cashed in their chips. Whether your advertising actually works or not has no bearing on the commission they’ll make from selling you the ads.

The even greater irony – the space where they placed that clever message was clearly unsold inventory – so instead of running an ad for a paying customer, they ran their own ad to attract a paying customer.

If the ad copy read “Nobody else saw the value in buying this space – how about putting your ad here?!” – do you think anyone would buy it?

Outdoor ads on benches and bus shelters may be useful for your business, but simply having ads in high traffic areas is no indication of whether your ad will “work” or not.