Before Advertising Consider Your Other Options. (And Check Your Basics)

At Lateral we have many many many many theories on advertising.

(yes theories, because advertising never was and never will become an exact science. Not only because there is creativity involved, but also because the damn world just keeps changing too fast)

One of our little theories is that advertising is often not the best way to spend a communication budget.

If possible one should try to get word of mouth, which is much more powerful because it comes from people who have their friends best interest in mind.

Zappos.com does a great job at this. Instead of spending money on advertising, they spend money on extreme service, which causes people to recommend zappos.com to their friends.

PR is also preferable to advertising because it comes from an impartial if not critical source.

Virgin does a great job at this. Not only does Virgin save millions in media spendings, we are convinced Virgin's messages are received more positive because consumers do not turn on their "Beware It's Advertising Alert".

Another thing we hold to be much more powerful than advertising is realy realy great product design.

With a design like this study from Tai Chiem, Playstation 4 sales will benefit from advertising, but definitely not depend on it.