forms that we see every day. Advances in electronic and broadcast
technologies provide a platform for advertising on television and
radio, over the Internet through “banner” ads and other inserts,
and even on the big screen in movie theaters.
Marketers must be circumspect in selecting advertising media,
because some may be controversial. Billboards are considered an
intrusion on the environment by many, as are promotional posters
attached to power poles, lining community streets, or stuffed into
mailboxes.
Even Internet advertising has come under severe scrutiny. Its
greatest weakness may be what was initially proclaimed as its
greatest strength: the ability to precisely track the number of view-
ers and those who were interested enough to buy the product. For
many, this was cutting-edge technology and an exciting approach
to marketing products and services.
But, in many cases, Web surfers did not respond as predicted
(they were more casual in their surfing habits than advertisers an-
ticipated as they eagerly used the new electronic frontier). Even
online companies themselves, which were expected to advertise
their services on the Internet, have become much more selective
in their advertising media selections. The result has been the fail-
ure of hundreds of dot-com enterprises whose advertisers could
quickly and preciselyconduct their own evaluations and research,
enabling them to analyze the exact number of “hits” they were re-
ceiving or, even more critical to the equation, notreceiving for
their investment. The dollar volume of sales resulting directly
from Internet advertising vis à vis the expenditures to advertise be-
came an easy comparison to track.
Print advertising pervades our daily lives. As we have ob-
served in the previous section, the images of event advertising
come to us on the sides of buses, in our newspapers and maga-
zines, on posters stapled to telephone poles, and on roadside signs,
ranging from small neighborhood notices about a yard sale to huge
billboards along our highways.
Association membership directories are often financed through
advertising, as are community news organs, school yearbooks, as-
sociation meeting brochures, and even church and synagogue bul-
letins. Event marketers should analyze the audience of any publi-
cation in order to determine the potential effectiveness of that
investment. The Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) realized
Never Forget the Five Ws 43