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Paid advertising: pros and cons

Possible goals

• Make your opponent think you may launch a major campaign.
• Try to affect how the media frame issues in their coverage.
• Generate free or "earned" media coverage of the ads themselves.
• Get a message out that you can't get out in other ways.
• Shore up internal morale or support from allies.
• Create legitimacy and buzz among elites or other audiences.
• Counter an opponent's paid ads.

Possible pitfalls

• Advertising is trumped by the messages the public or other audiences are getting from media coverage, direct experience, or other sources.
• You don't have enough money to finance the repetition it takes to affect opinion.
• The audience(s) you need to target may not be reached by the media where you have advertised.
• If ads don't help change the balance of power and you have used up those resources, you may look weaker in the eyes of opponents, potential supports, politicians, and other important groups.
• Advertising is a spectator sport, not an organizing strategy. Unlike other possible uses of the money, resources spent on advertising may not result in the person-to-person discussion and organizing it takes to get more people active in a campaign and build a movement.
• The public may not know or care enough about the issue to pay attention to the ads.
• By supposedly filling a need to be seen as doing something, paid ads may keep decision makers from confronting the need to develop other strategies to win.

Possible alternatives

Create earned media events that get our message out more cheaply, with more credibility, and with a greater increase in community involvement.

• Communicate directly with the real target audience -- be it potential supporters, politicians, a company's customers, investors, or community allies.
• Think of advertising as only a part of larger, integrated campaign strategy.
• Courtesy TheWorkSite.org