Generally speaking, there are two types of advertising. Image advertising, which is often referred to as institutional advertising, is designed to create a positive overall impression. Response advertising’s objective is to generate immediate results.
Let’s take a few moments to examine a category of response advertising – the free offer. “Free” is one of the most powerful words in advertising. Here are some idea starters:
Free sample. This usually applies to a small portion of a particular product. Imagine an ice cream shop that offers customers a free taste of a seasonal flavor. Or a new bakery that runs a coupon for a complimentary doughnut.
Free trial. This is not a money-back guarantee. It’s a way for consumers to take temporary ownership of a product, without an upfront cost. Premium cable television channels often use this tactic to introduce viewers to their shows.
Extra product free. Think of a restaurant that offers a free dessert with a meal. A variation of this tactic has become so popular that it has its own acronym: BOGO, as in “buy one, get one.” The “get one” could be the same or similar product for no cost or half price.
Free gift. This offer goes beyond samples, trials and extra products. Some companies give away products that may be unrelated to what they sell; for example, “Buy a widget and get a $25 gift card from XYZ coffee shop.”
Free demonstration. Although most product demonstrations are available at no charge, many businesses don’t like to make that offer. Maybe they think it’s too much trouble. On the other hand, there’s the powerboat dealer in North Carolina that invites serious prospects to test drive their boats in the lake behind their showroom.
Free information. “Write for our free brochure” used to be a common line in ads, but it has been largely replaced by “visit our web site.”
There are other ways to provide free information. Think of an investment firm that offers a free book on retirement or other relevant topics.
Free service (analysis, consultation, etc.). Real estate agents frequently offer free, no-obligation listing evaluations. Can one of your advertisers provide something similar?
Free training. When I was in the tenth grade, I saved up for a long time to buy a used guitar. The store won my business, because: (1) the guitar was a real beauty and (2) they offered three free lessons with the purchase.
Free installation. Free assembly or installation can be a big selling point. Several years ago, I was on the verge of buying a chair from an office supply store. But when I learned they had a $25 assembly fee – even for the chair I wanted, which was already assembled – I went somewhere else.
Free delivery. Take a hint from online sellers who sometimes provide free shipping. They know the persuasiveness of no-cost delivery. A local brick-and-mortar advertiser can attract attention with a phrase like: “Can’t pick it up? We’ll deliver it to you for free.”
(c) Copyright 2021 by John Foust. All rights reserved.
The death of NNA’s Postal Chair Emeritus Max Heath, Shelbyville, Kentucky, on July 28 set off a period of mourning across the community newspaper industry.
Dennis Richardson, owner of Magic Valley Publishing Co. and beloved husband, father and grandfather, passed away suddenly and peacefully at his Camden, Tennessee, home on Monday, July 26.
INN’s Quick Guide to Converting a For-profit to Nonprofit News Outlet aims to help publishers figure out the challenges and opportunities presented by restarting their news business as a tax-exempt 501(c)3 corporation. This practical guide provides expert insights into the conversion process — with tools and resources for further exploration — and raises many questions for publishers.
The U.S. Postal Service’s plan to raise mailing rates could present one more damaging blow to community newspapers already reeling from the coronavirus pandemic and advertising declines, a trade group says.
Freedom Forum Turns 30 Years Old On July 4
The Freedom Forum is 30 years old this July 4, but in many ways is just getting started in its mission of “fostering First Amendment freedoms for all.”
The First Amendment will be 230 years old later this year. Like the Freedom Forum, it is as current as today’s ongoing disputes over free speech on the web, roiling protests in the street, bitter debates over religious rights and anti-discrimination laws and difficult new questions about the role of a free press in the 21st century.
For those uncertain what is even in the First Amendment, the Freedom Forum’s “State of the First Amendment” national surveys since 1997 say you have a lot of company. No more than six percent in any year could name all five freedoms in the amendment. Each year somewhere around one-third of us cannot name any.
In case you are asked, the five freedoms are religion, speech, press, assembly and petition.
For three decades, the Freedom Forum has fostered the public’s knowledge and understanding of our First Amendment freedoms:
REACHING MILLIONS IN WASHINGTON, D.C., AND ONLINE
Most publicly, there was the Newseum. One opened in 1997, in Rosslyn, Va., just across the Potomac River from downtown Washington, D.C. It closed as construction was under way for its bigger successor. The new Newseum was open from 2008 to 2019 on Pennsylvania Avenue — “America’s Main Street”— halfway between the U.S. Capitol and The White House.
Both Newseums were about all five freedoms, often through the lens of free speech or a free press.
About 11 million people visited the two Newseums, and the hundreds of thousands who toured the spaces each year were amplified many times over online. In just one year, 12 million students and teachers interacted with the Freedom Forum’s online education posts and lesson plans on topics as varied as social justice, media literacy, spotting “fake news” on the web and how we got those five core freedoms — all at no charge.
EDUCATING JOURNALISTS AND TEACHERS
The Freedom Forum has not only helped Americans value the First Amendment and free press, but also worked to make First Amendment education and journalism better. It has produced doctoral programs in journalism and published nonpartisan guidelines on how to teach about religion in public schools — the latter distributed by the Clinton administration to every public school in the nation.
The Freedom Forum’s First Amendment Center, headquartered at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., and now named for its founder, editor and publisher John Seigenthaler, has produced publications, thought leadership, events, concerts, moot court competitions and television programs.
Through grants and guidance, the Freedom Forum helped in the creation of journalism groups representing Black, Native American and Asian American journalists. That commitment to diversity and inclusion in a free press continues today with the Chips Quinn Scholars program (CQS), set up in 1991 to increase the number of people of color in U.S. newsrooms, and the Power Shift Project, established in 2018 to promote newsroom integrity and inclusion.
From international programs that trained journalists in other nations, libraries throughout the former Soviet Union, satellite offices on both coasts and around the world, education initiatives nationwide, two long-running television series and more, the Freedom Forum has advanced the values of the First Amendment.
Explore a behind-the-scenes timeline of 30 years of fostering First Amendment freedoms for all.
THINKING DIFFERENTLY
The Freedom Forum’s work has focused on helping the public know, understand and defend freedoms set out by the First Amendment’s deceptively simple 45 words. Sometimes that work begins with noting that the opening phase “Congress shall make no law abridging …” now means any part of government, be it presidents or mayors, school superintendents or police officers, football coaches or agency administrators.
Relentlessly nonpartisan and apolitical, the foundation has both benefited from that posture — principally, as a convenor of all sides on a variety of issues — and faced criticism when recognizing that the First Amendment protects opposing and objectionable opinions.
The foundation has been prescient at times in its programs. In 1997, Freedom Forum founder Al Neuharth interviewed Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai about Lai’s rags-to-riches-to-newspaper publisher life story and the future of freedom in Hong Kong. Earlier this year, the Freedom Forum saluted Lai as one of its Free Expression Award winners — with Lai in a Chinese prison. Apple Daily was since shut down by a Chinese government ruthlessly backtracking on the city’s promised democratic exceptions to China’s authoritarianism.
Read Al Neuharth’s Feb. 2, 1996, column from USA TODAY on press freedom in Hong Kong.
Presaging the intense debate today over journalism’s ethics, the Freedom Forum in the mid-1990s launched “Free Press-Fair Press,” a multi-year, multi-million-dollar project that ranged from town meetings to newsroom guides and panel programs in the U.S. and abroad, with multiple spin-off initiatives at the Newseums.
MOVING FORWARD
What is ahead for the Freedom Forum? The First Amendment faces new challenges, particularly claims the “marketplace of ideas” concept, which has underpinned the amendment for 230 years, is outmoded in a global, web-connected world.
Foster First Amendment freedoms into the future by joining the 30th Anniversary Circle.
Our nation has been here before. In the early years of the republic, some First Amendment freedoms were enforceably denied to women and people of color. The introduction of new technologies — from mass-circulation newspapers to radio, TV and the internet — has produced fearful reactions over how the “new” would and did change society. The inherent conflict produced by the protection of fringe and extreme beliefs, faiths and opinions is not new, but the First Amendment is up to the task. The Freedom Forum’s next focus is to ensure a growing number of Americans grasp the 21st century relevance and importance of the First Amendment.
For 30 years, the Freedom Forum has been a rare voice heard on behalf of hearing all voices. In a competitive, fractured world that is often not an easy or comfortable position for any organization: Friend and guide for all, partisan of none.
But it is the path chosen by the founders of the Freedom Forum, advanced over three decades, and the renewed focus of today’s leadership — all in service of the 45 words of the First Amendment that frame the foundation and what it means to be an American.
Join us to celebrate 30 years of fostering First Amendment freedoms for all at a virtual celebration on Thursday, July 22. Come look back at three decades of fostering First Amendment freedoms for all and ahead at what’s next.