So many forms of media exist today that Media Nerd is absolutely certain that soon the phrase “alternative media” will cease to have any meaning at all. In our quest to make sure that nobody escapes from advertising messages we use every available surface for signage, screen placement, projection, graffiti, murals, until the landscape has no clear, open surfaces. So here are a few ideas about more:
Health Clubs:
- Cardio-workout equipment can be equipped with text zippers on which to read news, stock quotes, and ads.
- Plastic bags in the locker rooms can carry ads, which will cut the cost for the club because the advertiser is underwriting the service.
- Towels can be made with ads or logos and then supplied free or at low cost to the club
- Let’s not forget the back of the restroom stall door, which is already being done in bars and clubs.
Books:
- Bookmarks with ads/coupons can be distributed in bookstores with purchases and/or in libraries with books being checked out
- Put ads back in mass-market paperback books; they had bound-in ads in the middle about 50 years ago. That will help cut the cost of books themselves while delivering an audience that probably reads fewer magazines and watches less television.
Media Nerd recently met with the sales manager of Hercules Networks, a company that makes charging stations for cell phones: You watch news, weather, and ads while your cell phone charges in 10 minutes flat. Bookstores, libraries, and health clubs are three more venues I would suggest to him, since the average user is in each of these venues for at least ten minutes while browsing, shopping, or dressing. Not to mention everyone else who is also there who is exposed to the ads.
Of course, this also needs an approach that a client can measure, since everything is all about results. This has been done with 800-telephone numbers before, so there is a simple answer: All ads carry a variation of the web address so the site administrator can pull reports to log the number of hits by media form. That’s how to measure ROI.