Sure-Foot

Well, not exactly a shoestring. But by most estimates, a very conservative budget. The challenge came from Sure-Foot Industries in Cleveland to introduce a new extruded aluminum stair step product for schools, manufacturers, athletic complexes, certain retail locations and others.

Without the budget to place full-page ads, we promoted Bold Step with a publicity blitz to over 100 publications, and then small space ads in one carefully selected, broad-reach trade magazine. Because the ad is too small to tell the whole feature/benefit story, and because we expect many editors to trim our PR release, both the ad and news release were specifically designed to send prospects to a specially prepared web site: a-bold-step.com.

At the web site, our prospects get the entire Bold Step selling story, and we are able to monitor traffic there to measure the effectiveness of the campaign on a day-to-day basis.

The site also invited inquiries - a critical advantage since there has been such a tremendous decline in the usage of now out-dated reader service "bingo" cards.

It's an example of what's happening in advertising these days - an illustration of the up-to-date approach to capturing the full potential of the available marketing communication mix.