Aerial Advertising - The Most Memorable Means of Mass Advertising
Advertising is usually a big budget item for many businesses. Most agree that word-of-mouth is the most effective method but it takes time to build up a good foundation of happy customers.
Alternative advertising methods include high cost radio or television ads, that might be targeted at a local community. However, too often people channel surf during the commercials and never even hear what is offered. Printed matter can be effective to reach a community but what percent ends up as wrapping for fish? Internet advertising is growing but may reach for a local business a much larger market than is useful.
One novel plan to quickly and effectively inform a local population of a product or service is aerial advertising. A firm is hired to make a large banner with a concise message and then to trail this message behind an airplane flown over a beach, sporting event, concert, parade or any open sky gathering. The people hear the drone of the plane, look up, read the ad, and the message is delivered. Does this sound expensive? It is actually more cost effective than most of the methods of advertising mentioned above.
For much less cost than other traditional advertising methods, aerial advertisers claim that their method reaches more people in a more effective way. Here’s an example: One beach in Miami was advertised to and then, 30 minutes later, 2000 people were surveyed. The survey showed that 88% knew the ad had flown by, 79% recalled what the subject, and 67% could recall at least half of the exact message. Anyone would be hard pressed to say that printed ads, radio or TV could match that effectiveness at just five dollars per thousand people targeted. Those spending significant amounts of their budget on traditional advertising would do well to consider that they can reach as many people with less than half that budget using aerial advertising.
The noise of the plane overhead attracts the attention of the crowd and they look up. There, behind the plane, is a banner flapping in the wind and displaying a large, readable message, product, logo, or website. This naturally raises their curiosity and they want to know what it’s all about. As the banner passes overhead, they are able to read it several times. Just the uniqueness of the delivery causes many to remember the product because it stands out from everything else that is fighting for their attention.
Concerns of air pollution caused by the plane can be put aside as this is much less than the amount of waste produced by discarded print advertisements reaching the same number of people. Comparatively, aerial advertising is much less invasive.
Companies interested in reaching a large number of people in a short period of time with their product or service should consider looking into aerial advertising as a means to this end.
