Where Advertising Gets it Wrong

Do you believe that marketers have the right to use any or all public spaces to deliver product messages? Where would you draw the line in terms of place and products that should be off limits?

Well, obviously not all venues are suitable for all audiences. Market segmentation and studying consumers’ buying habits is very essential to reach the target sales quota. Putting up billboards and making ads for tv and radio are costly yet crucial to a company’s survival in a highly competitive business world. This makes identifying the habits of buyers more important.

Case1. The context makes an advertisement effective or failed. For example a billboard, advertising a multivitamins product of energy drink will be useless in a slum that is poverty driven. Since the poor segment of the society struggle to see overhead expenses, they, obviously, will be ignorant to the benefits of a multivitamins.

Case2. Inappropriate ads can be deadly. At the same time some companies have been sued for using “flashy” advertisements in highways that have actually resulted in severe accidents. The following advertisement caused 517 accidents in Moscow.