Devoted to lead generation, lead generators, and successful lead gen campaigns

...case in point: This advertisment highlighted in Seth Godin's post today:

Expensive?  Sure.  Popular old-style ad medium?  Absolutely.  Did it make their ad agency money?  Darn straight it did.

The chance of this sign resulting in a marked increase in flights to Budapest?  Well, you and I know the answer to that...which is impressive since we don't have big cuchy ad agency offices on Madison Avenue.

My first reaction when I saw the picture on Seth's blog?  "How stupid!"  Again, I don't have the credentials that the advertising experts who put this whopper together do.  But I know what works and what doesn't.  And this - considering what the campaign probably cost, what the ad design cost, what the copywriters cost, and all the other costs that went into the ad - doesn't work.  There's no way.

And yet:

1. Someone sold it to Delta and convinced them it could work.
2. Someone at Delta said, "You're right! It will work!"
3. They're sitting by the phone waiting for the calls to come in.

Seth analyzes it best in his post, so I'm not going to re-hash it here.  Except to say, if you're considering expensive media buys to generate sales leads, make sure you remember that you're doing business in 2006...not 1976.  The same old ad techniques just don't work as well as they used to.

What a stupid way to try and generate sales leads....