#988 Ads on a Shoestring

The world of advertising is currently on a twofold craze. Branding branding and more branding, and guerilla marketing on a shoestring budget.
Guerilla marketing is the advice—or the vice of ads as the case may be—to do things wrong to make them right. Shun the tried and true conventions of advertising and think out of the box. Hopefully cheaply. The people purveying this idea most are people who are trying to sell something out of the box.
Now ask yourself. When was the last time you bought something as a result of seeing it on the backside of a grocery store receipt?
Grocery store receipts emerged as a result of the “there’s a blank spot let’s put an ad on it” philosophy. Unfortunately, the human brain is amazingly good at filtering out what it doesn’t want to see. So after a while grocery receipt ads disappeared—from our minds.
Then there’s this thing I saw the other day. A local business had bought these little strips of plastic with its name on it. In addition to the company’s name the strip said to bring it in to another company for 10% off on a coffee drink. I hope he got some money from them.
So when was the last time 10% off seemed like a good deal? Would you buy more coffee if the price went down from 3 bucks to 2.70? Worse, the little plastic strip wasn’t entirely clear whether I get 10% off each time I go or if I have to surrender the strip the first time.
And if I do, there goes the advertising for the first company’s name. I was going to check the details but the thing was so small I lost it somewhere. So much for branding.
Not as small as this other weird branding thing I saw though. My shoelaces on my new racquetball shoes have those hard plastic tips. So on each of those there’s a teeny-tiny bit of printing. It says Wilson. Crazy? Shoelace tips? A branding opportunity?
Say what you will, it gives advertising on a shoestring a whole new meaning.
America, ya gotta love it.