WO2010064996A2

WO2010064996A2 - Method for marketing and advertising

Info

Publication number: WO2010064996A2
Application number: PCT/SG2009/000466
Authority: WO
Inventors: Ng Ghee Tjia
Original assignee: Ng Ghee Tjia
Priority date: 2008-12-05
Filing date: 2009-12-04
Publication date: 2010-06-10
Also published as: WO2010064996A3; SG171981A1

Abstract

This invention relates to a method for marketing and advertising. More particularly, the present invention relates to a methodology that may assist invention, inventors, researchers, entrepreneurs, advertisers and the promotion of invention. The method comprising providing a first to launch product; identifying an advertiser to form a marketing relationship with the product; and forming a linkage between the advertiser and the product so as to jointly market the product and the advertiser's brand to achieve a mutually benefiting relationship.

Description

METHOD FOR MARKETING AND ADVERTISING

Field of the Invention

This invention relates to a method for marketing and advertising. More particularly, the present invention relates to a methodology that may assist invention, inventors, researchers, entrepreneurs, advertisers and the promotion of invention.

It helps to alleviate the difficulties of inventors in funding, market penetration and sales. For the marketer / advertiser, it provides a tangible ROI (Return in investment) advertising media, increase advertising rates (recall, recognition and hit rates), sales, profits, market shares and enhance on-going advertising efficiency and corporate image. The media may also be closer, more comfortable and financially beneficial to the customer.

Background of the Invention

For decades, many inventors incur a lot of effort, time and money to research and invent countless inventions. However, only a small percentage of inventions has successfully commercialized. This can be frustrating and be a waste of labor, time, talent, money and productivity for a person and country. It is also destructive for the inventor and may promote anti-entrepreneurship, anti-exploration and anti invention.

For a typical start-up inventor who is not supported by a company or corporation, he has to overcome numerous financial obstacles from seeding to product launch. For example, these obstacles may include the following:

^■ Costs of filing Patent Applications. ■ Research and Development.

^■ Prototyping.

■ Cost in getting Investors.

^■ Company set up and cash flow.

^■ Manufacturing and Product Inventories. ■ Distribution of products.

^■ Advertising of products. The majority of inventors face difficulties in obtaining funds or investors, and convincing the market that the product will be commercially successful. One usually has to depend on his savings or personal loans, as seldom do banks and institutional capitals support such seeding start-ups.

As an invention is novel, new in the market and no test or survey can assure its successful commercialization, investing companies and individual investors are usually doubtful about the product.

Funds are limited and usually from savings, loans or investors that are closely related to the inventor, for example friends and relatives. Numerous inventors fail to market or commercialize the product successfully due to financial constraints or lack of expertise and resources in bringing the product to the market place.

If the product fails, the inventor may fall into debts or bankruptcy, which may affect him, his family and investors who are close to him. This will be devastating for his financial and personal credibility, which may become a stigma for life. Indirectly it promotes anti-entrepreneurship, anti-invention, anti-talent, anti-academic and anti- self excel.

Talented inventors or entrepreneurs may end up avoiding taking risks to invent or excel, in view of the difficulties and daunting consequences. Naturally, investors will lose faith in researches and inventions, and creates a vicious cycle for future inventors and entrepreneurs.

Some inventors may have managed to launch the product, but face difficulty in publicizing / advertising / creating awareness of the product and market penetration.

In the current market environment, advertising is vital and is one of the important factors that determine the success of the product. Besides the properties of advertising in branding and publicize, customers, distributors, marketer and retail chains also use product advertising exposure / coverage as a gauge for the product's / corporate reliability, credibility, product worth and product successful rate. This affects the patent product's market penetration and inventor's terms of negotiation. The basic definition of advertising is to let as many people as possible know about a brand or product, and there may be no restriction or necessary relations between the advertiser's product and the advertising media, as long as the advertiser's branding or product is seen or exposed to the customer as many times as possible.

There are three rates that may be used to estimate the cost and efficiency of an advertising media:

1. Recalling. Recalling rates are relative to corporate logo or brand, which the customer is repeatedly reminded of the branding, and it is usually interrelated to the left side of our brain.

2. Recognition. Recognition rates are relative to corporate product, which the customer is repeatedly reminded of the product, and it is usually interrelated to the right side of our brain.

3. Hit rates imply to the number of exposures that the customer is being prompted by the advertisement.

Advertisers spend billions of dollars annually or about 30% of their revenues to publicize corporate branding and products, strategically competing for space of recall and recognition in the customer's psychological reaction to their corporate branding and product in relative to its industry.

For example, "ABC Corporation", a soft drink company, hopes that with intensive advertising, the customers will relate to "ABC" soft drink naturally and instinctively, regardless of whether the customer requires the need to buy the soft drink.

The marketer's / advertiser's objective is either to promote the new product or keep the customers reminded about their corporate branding / product. Thus, remaining competitive in its industry.

Hopefully, these advertising expenditures can be converted to greater sales and profits. But, neither great advertising media measurements nor market surveys can justify or measure real customer spending before advertising or marketing campaign. There is no tangible Return of Investment (ROI) for the advertiser.

In the current competitive market environment, corporations and companies spend a lot of effort in marketing and implement every possible method to maximize the probability of success in their product, for example increasing revenue and sales. Usually, intense competition is unavoidable, where innovations and marketing synergies are pursued to enhance its competitive edge and corporate image.

With the fast moving and changing market environment, corporations are competing for customers and market share, and yet stay vigilant of new product, technologies and competitors. Decline in sales, increase in backlog inventories or share price depreciation may result in large losses.

Some examples of typical marketing strategies include:

■ Lucky draws.

^■ Gifts.

^■ Inter-brand collaboration.

^■ Intensive advertising. ■ Discounts and Sales.

In these circumstances, there is a need to provide a more effective alternative for inventors, researchers, entrepreneurs, marketers and advertisers.

Summary of the Invention

In accordance with a first aspect of the invention, there is provided a method for marketing and advertising, which combines the advantageous factors of all entities to form an advertising media, which benefits the marketer / advertiser and inventor.

The method comprising:

(a) providing a first to launch product;

(b) identifying an advertiser to form a marketing relationship with the product; and (c) forming a linkage between the advertiser and the product so as to jointly market the product and the advertiser's brand to achieve a mutually benefiting relationship.

By "first to launch product", it is meant to include any object or product or part of a product that is novel and not yet available in a market or country, and that no one is supplying the market or country with that object or product through any channel of trade such as retail, internet, mail order distribution, or the like. By "novel", it is means that the product does not form part of the state of the art.

By "advertiser", it is meant to include an advertising agency, a corporation, a company or commercial entity having a registered business in any field or trade.

By "relationship", it is meant to include any attribute that relates the advertiser to the product.

By "linkage", it is meant to include a mental, sensory, visual, aural, olfactory, or tactile connection between the advertiser and the product, or any representation of the product that characterizes or personifies the advertiser's brand and therefore enables a person or a consumer to view the product as a related entity to the advertiser.

Preferably, the first to launch product is a patented product or is the subject of a patent application.

Preferably, the method further comprises packaging the product with the advertiser's brand.

Preferably, the product is in an industry that is not the same as the advertiser. Preferably, the product may be first launched in a particular market or country for a pre-determined period of time, and then launched in another market or country for a pre-determined period of time.

Preferably, the method further comprises conducting a campaign to market the advertiser's brand concurrently with the product.

Preferably, the advertiser is the sole seller of the product during the advertising and marketing campaign. However, there may be multiple advertisers involved in the campaign and using the same product concurrently, if the cost is too high for one advertiser.

Preferably, the product and the advertiser are in complementary industries. Preferably, the method further comprises designing the product using elements of the advertiser's brand.

Preferably, the method further comprises using the product as an advertising medium.

By "advertising medium", it is meant to include any mode of communication that exposes a customer to the product and the advertiser's brand.

Brief Description of the Drawings

In order that the present invention may be fully understood and readily put into practical effect, there shall now be described by way of non-limitative example only preferred system or methodology of the present invention, the description being with reference to the accompanying illustrative drawings.

In the drawings:

Figure 1 shows the table of advantageous / disadvantageous properties of the inventor and Marketer / Advertiser.

Figure 2 shows the table of objectives / goals of the inventor and Marketer / Advertiser.

Figure 3 is a block diagram of a system and method of the present invention as an advertising media.

Figure 4 is the table of comparison between the current marketing strategies of inventors, Marketer / Advertiser and the invention.

Figure 5 is the block diagrams showing the invention inter-complementing the advantageous factors of both parties, with implementation of advertising property, eliminates the disadvantageous elements.

Figure 6 shows an example of implementing IPAMM by advertisers / marketers, with a 2 months promotional campaign. Detailed Description of the Invention

The invention - IPAMM (Inventive Product Advertising and Marketing Media) is a system and method for inventors and marketers / advertisers. Figure 1 shows the table of advantages and disadvantages properties of an inventor and a Marketer / Advertiser. IPAMM complements both the inventor and the marketer / Advertiser. Figure 2 shows the table of objectives / goals of both parties which should be achieved after the implementation of IPAMM.

Inventor and Patent Product:

The Patent product is an invention by the inventor, which is novel, new in the market place and has no competition. While this may be an advantage, substantial funds are required to commercialize, publicize and penetrate the market place successfully.

The inventor's objectives / goals may be summarized as:

^■ Successful product commercialization.

^■ Good market penetration.

^■ Funds availability. ■ Lower risk and higher rate of success.

The Marketer and Advertiser:

Compared with the inventor, a well-establish marketer / advertiser had penetrated the market place and gained a market share of its industry, branding, networks, funds availability for marketing / advertising.

In order to stay competitive and keeping customers reminded of corporate branding and product, corporations may spent about 50% or more in equivalent to their net income in advertising and marketing, with uncertainty of product sales or campaign profitability.

An established marketer's / advertiser's objective / goals may be summarized as:

■ Stay competitive.

■ Customers remembering their brand / product instinctively. ■ Sales, profits and market share.

^■ Positive corporate image. Figure 3 is a block diagram of a system and method of the present invention as an advertising media. IPAMM (Inventive Product Advertising and Marketing Media) is a combination of patent product, advertising and marketing, to form an advertising media with marketing strategy.

IPAMM consists of three sections:

1. The patent product, which relates to the inventor.

2. The advertising section which is the link / relation / connection between the patent product / Inventor and the Marketer / Advertiser. 3. The Marketing / Sales section which relates to the Marketer / Advertiser.

1. Inventor / Patent product:

The Patent product is an invention of the inventor, which is new in the market and has no competition. This also means that customers can only buy the patent product from product launch or IPAMM, which is only available through the marketer / advertiser's promotion campaigns. For example, the Marketer / Advertiser would be the parties acquiring and/or selling the products.

To achieve the best result of IPAMM, the patent product shall be a pioneer launch in the particular market / country. The patent product in this invention does not include advertising product by nature (those products not meant for advertising) for example: Television, Internet, radio ...etc. IPAMM is a system and method that consist of patent products that are not traditionally or subsequently used as an advertising media. Example: For the inventive pencil, it will not be an advertising media unless through IPAMM, where there is an advertiser, an inventor, and the link of advertising property. The "Pioneer Launch factor" is also an important factor to differentiate between IPAMM and traditional inventions that are marketed subsequently after they had been marketed in that country under a different brand name.

2. Link / Advertising:

As stated in the basic property of advertising, the main objective is to expose the advertiser's branding or product to the customer - which prompts the customer to relate or recall the advertiser's branding or product. It is not necessary to have a direct relationship between the invention / patent product and the advertiser's product or business. The advertising property of IPAMM is the connecting factor between the inventor / patent product and the marketer / advertiser, and is accomplished by packaging / designing the patent product relative to the advertiser's corporate branding or product.

Example: The patent product may be a new and inventive pencil, and the advertiser / marketer may be a soft drink corporation. There is no direct relation between the two parties. But, by packaging the patent product with advertiser's brand or designing it as a can of soft drink with the advertiser's brand creates an advertising relationship.

In another example, the product may be a novel and inventive product or invention which is the subject of a patent application such as in WO2006/068624 whereby the subject of the patent application is an apparatus for facilitating the transmission of vapour particles directly into a nasal passage. The advertiser/marketer may be a company in a complementary field or a company in a non-related field. As regards a company in a non-related field such as a travel company that sells travel products, the patent product as defined in WO 2006/068624 may be packaged with the travel company's brand, and in addition, the patent product may be used to promote the travel products such as by incorporating scents that may invoke memories or motivation to travel in consumers. For example, the patent product may incorporate the scent of cherry blossoms which may bring to the mind of the consumers countries such as Japan or Korea. The consumer may therefore be enticed into buying the travel package to Japan from the travel company through the linkage formed between the patent product and the advertiser. Alternatively, the product's packaging may be molded as the cherry blossom, which relates to travel in Japan.

Advantageously, by marrying the elements of the patent product and the advertiser's brand, and using the patent product as an advertising medium, the travel company is able to depart from traditional advertising media such as brochures or trade shows to be the first company to revolutionalize the way of advertising travel. On the other hand, the inventor of the patent product gains market exposure for the invention. The travel company may also be the sole seller of the patent product (during the advertising campaign). This may be advantageous where the destination of the travel is at high altitudes where travelers may experience giddiness, the travel company may also use such patent products to promote to customers for use during travel, therefore effectively leveraging the advantages of the patent product and selling value-added services of the travel company.

In another example, the patent product may be a subject of a patent application such as in WO 2009/126114 whereby the subject of the patent application is an apparatus for facilitating mixing of a fluid. The advertiser/marketer may be a company in a complementary field such as a corporation that sells hair care or shower products, or hotels.

In terms of advertising recall, recognition and hit rates, the customer will be prompted or exposed to the advertisement-packaged patent product, whenever he uses, interacts, sees or carries it. This promoting may be multiple and daily, depending on the type and field of the implementing patent product(s). For example, the advertiser may be a soft drink company, and the patent product may be in a different field such as healthcare, education, IT, entertainment.

IPAMM may also improve the efficiency of the advertiser's on-going marketing / advertising campaigns, in the case where the advertisement-packaged patent product works as a prompting element that reminds the customer about the advertiser's branding / product; and indirectly relates to the advertiser's future ongoing advertising campaigns.

For an advertiser with an annual advertising expenditure of 100 million dollars, an increase of 10% in advertising efficiency equates to 10 millions in saving. In other words, with increased in advertising efficiency, the advertising expenditure may be reduced by 10% to achieve the objective sales or sales result is better than expected. Both circumstances result with better sales and profits.

The life span of IPAMM and the patent product are dependent on each other and may vary from days to years, and best of all, without additional advertising costs. For conventional advertising media, keeping an advertisement recurring will incur costs, be it TV, newspaper, internet, or the like, that is chargeable by the media companies. With IPAMM of the present invention, there will be no cost incurred when the customer is exposed to the advertisements since the products are on the shelves and they themselves act as advertisements. This linkage is the collaborative element of the inventor's patent product and the marketer / advertiser. Without the advertising property, the marketer / advertiser may view the product as a non-related entity to the corporation's core business, product or marketing strategy.

3. The Marketer and Advertiser:

To stay competitive, an established marketer / advertiser usually implements intensive advertising, that requires the availability of a relatively large budget. The objective of advertising may fall into one of the following categories: ■ New product launching.

^■ Repetitive advertisings to remind customers about their branding and product.

With IPAMM, it is an alternative in advertising and marketing, which result in greater sales, revenues and market shares.

In IPAMM, the patent product will be packaged / designed relative to the advertiser's corporate branding or product for advertising implementation. The customers will be exposed to the advertisement, whenever they use, interact or carry the advertisement-packaged patent product.

This increases the advertising recall, recognition and hit rates, and indirectly increases the advertiser's on-going marketing / advertising efficiency. The advertisements may emerge more comfortably and closer to the customer, depending on the type of patent product.

With IPAMM, the customers may only purchase the patent product from the advertisers' marketing campaign, which may be a pioneer launch for the patent product in a particular market or country. Financially, the marketer / advertiser may gain from the sales revenues of the patent product and his promotional sales concurrently, which directly increases profits and market share.

Advertising ROI (Return Of Investment) is the ratio of sales and advertising expenditure. Conventional advertising media can only provides the expected media circulation rate, for example: number of viewers / readers / print circulations... etc, but not the number of customers buying the product. Hence, it is impossible to evaluate the ROI before the advertising campaign. Every advertiser would like to know the expected returns / sales in every advertising campaign, because of the large expected expenditure which may impact a company's revenue.

With IPAMM, the advertising ROI can be evaluated with expected sales and minimum procurement cost of the patent product. Majority of the product cost may be transferred to the inventor subsequently, hence, providing a lower risk and cost in advertising investment.

Advertising recall, recognition and hit rates, which are essential to the advertiser, will also be evaluated with the sales number of patent product.

For the marketer / advertiser, IPAMM also creates an alternative market segment relative to the patent product. For example, the advertiser may be a soft drink manufacturer or company and the patent product may be in a different field, e.g. healthcare, education, entertainment, IT... etc.. With IPAMM of the present invention, the advertiser is having a campaign to advertise his product (soft drinks) concurrently together with the patent product. Hence, the advertiser will attract customers that are interested in fields that may be different from the advertiser's products (e.g. soft drinks).

Advantageously, IPAMM may also enhance the marketer / advertiser's corporate image in the following ways: 1. Relative to the patent product - example, supporting healthcare if the patent product is related to healthcare.

2. Supporting invention and research.

3. Supporting talent and entrepreneurship.

4. Supporting dreams and ambition fulfillment. 5. Supporting juveniles' interest in exploration and academic excellent explanation: because of higher possibility of success. 6. As a caring corporation.

These positive benefits are monetarily immeasurable, and has a direct positive impact to the people / customers / nation, where the corporate may be remembered perpetually. For the customer, he may benefits from the discounts of the patent product.

Figure 4 is the table of comparison between the current marketing strategies of inventors, Marketer / Advertiser and IPAMM.

Current collaborative marketing strategies for inventors:

^■ Sponsorship advertising, where advertiser's branding is implemented on the patent product, but marketing and sales through the inventor.

^■ Exclusive dealership / distributorship. ■ Collaborative sales with other corporate.

Current marketing strategies for marketers/ advertisers:

^■ Implementing conventional products like cups, pens ...etc as gifts or discount sales to attract customers. ■ Market product using other established brand that is unrelated to their industry. Example: Marketer is a laptop corporate, and the established brand is a car corporate, hence, marketing implement by putting the car logo on the laptop as an attractive synergy.

Conventional marketing strategies may be implemented by any of the parties (inventor or marketer / advertiser), where the stated are the preferred methods. From the comparison of IPAMM and conventional methods, it can be seen that only IPAMM has the properties of patent-ability, advertising properties of the advertiser, and sales / marketing is performed through the marketer / advertiser.

Figure 5 shows IPAMM inter-complementing advantageous factors of both parties, with implementation of advertising property, eliminate the disadvantageous elements and achieves the objectives /goals of the marketer / advertiser and the inventors with the following advantages:

The inventor:

1. Can achieve faster and easier market penetration.

2. Easier to obtain supporting funds from investors or banks.

3. Higher rate of success in product commercialization.

For the Marketer / Advertiser: 1. As the patent product is novel, customers may only buy from the marketer / advertiser in the marketing campaign. This will increase the sales, revenues, profits and market share in the collaborative promotion of the patent product and its corporation product. 2. Alternative market segment relative to the patent product.

3. Advertising ROI is obtainable to reduce risk and advertising cost.

4. In advertising aspects, the Marketer / Advertiser can benefit from the advertising properties of higher advertising effective rates (recall, recognition and hit rates). 5. Increase in advertising efficiency for on-going advertising campaigns, without additional advertising cost.

6. Longer advertising life span without additional advertising cost.

7. The advertising may be closer and more comfortable to the customer.

8. Enhance positive corporate image in: ■ Supporting inventions and entrepreneurship.

■ Supporting other field of industry that may provide a positive image to the corporation. Example: Healthcare, education... etc.

^■ Supporting academic excellence.

■ Supporting juvenile interest in exploration and research. ■ Caring corporation.

These supportive properties are monetarily immeasurable.

For the customer: May buy the patent product at a lower cost. Hence, with IPAMM, it is a win-win-win situation for the inventor, marketer / advertiser and the customers.

Figure 6 shows the implementation and market flow of IPAMM. Using IPAMM as an advertising media, the advertiser / marketer A1 , A2...etc) may implement promotional campaign of its product / services with the patent product as a marketing strategy and an advertising media (where the patent product is designed or packaged relative to the advertiser's branding).

The duration of the advertiser's / marketer's promotional campaign may vary (illustration is based on 2 months) for each patent product, and subsequently switch to another patent product (patent product 1 , 2 ...etc) in IPAMM. The initial promotional campaign may be implemented in a single or various markets, and followed to other markets. As illustrated, the initial market is Singapore and followed by United States... etc.

The patent products or inventions may origin from various inventors (a1 , a2, b1, b2...etc) hence benefiting and supporting the objectives of entrepreneurship and invention.

Example - Illustration of the system, method and the benefiting effects:

Example:

Inventor: a1

Funds required: $10 million

Patent product: InvPI

Unit Selling Price: $100

Actual expected retail market price: $200

The advertiser / Marketer: Adv1

Annual Advertising spending: $100 million

Profit of Advertiser's / Marketer's per service / product: $ 4

Selling Price of Promotional Patent Product $110

For the inventor, a1 , to fulfill the required funds to launch his product, the minimum expected patent product sales may be 10 million / 100 = 100,000 sets, which shall be the initial purchase order from the advertiser / marketer. This shall solve the problem of the inventor in fund sourcing as:

1. Total or part funds will be available from the advertiser.

2. Higher possibility of getting financial support from banks or private investors.

For the advertiser / marketer, the profit of implementing IPAMM:

1. Sales of service / product of the advertiser / marketer during the promotional campaign. 2. Sales of the patent product InvPI . If the advertiser / marketer sells the patent product with a profit of 10% or $10 at $110. The expected total additional profit from the initial sales of patent product will be $10 * 100,000 sets = $ 1 million.

Subsequent purchase of the patent product from the advertiser may be sustainable by the inventor, a1 , as the basic cost will be much lesser and manageable because there will be no one-time typical cost like start up, prototype, mold cost... etc. This may benefit the advertiser / marketer in term of financial outlay. For the advertiser / marketer, the breakeven for the initial IPAMM patent product will be = Total cost / Selling price of the patent Product = 10 million / 110 = 90,909 sets of patent product, Invpi

If the evaluated total global sales of patent product, InvPI , is 10 million sets, the evaluated for the advertiser / marketer shall be 10 million * $10 = $100 million.

The evaluated ROI (Return of Investment) of IPAMM shall be: 1. For initial market IPAMM campaign, the ROI:

= (Unit profit of patent product + Unit profit of marketer's product or service) * Total number of Patent Product / Investment cost

= (10 + 4) * 100,000 / 10,000,0000 = 0.14 = 14% or 10% if only patent product's profit is taken into consideration.

2. For global market IPAMM campaign of 10 million patent product sales, the ROI: = (Unit profit of patent product + Unit profit of marketer's product or service) ^*

Total number of Patent Product / Investment cost = (10 + 4) * 10,000,000 / 10,000,0000 = 14 = 1400% or 1000% if only patent product's profit is taken into consideration.

In comparison to the advertiser's / marketer's conventional advertising, IPAMM may only cost 10% of the annual advertising spending and achieve the advertising and marketing objectives, with a longer life span of advertising (properties of IPAMM) and financial benefits. In terms of ROI, it will be more evaluative and the business risk will be lesser and more manageable. Concurrently, it enhance the corporate image of the advertiser / marketer in supporting entrepreneurship and invention.

The promotional selling price of the patent product is $110 instead of the expected retail price of $200, which benefits the customers of the advertiser / marketer in cost saving of $90. This illustration shows the basic benefits and the system flow of IPAMM. Other variations may be used in terms of the percentage of profits, ROI evaluation or marketing promotions.

Claims

1. A method for marketing and advertising, the method comprising: (a) providing a first to launch product; (b) identifying an advertiser to form a marketing relationship with the product; and

(c) forming a linkage between the advertiser and the product so as to jointly market the product and the advertiser's brand to achieve a mutually benefiting relationship.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the first to launch product is a patented product or is the subject of a patent application.

3. The method according to any one of claims 1 or 2, further comprising packaging the product with the advertiser's brand.

4. The method according to any one of the preceding claims, wherein the product is in an industry that is not the same as the advertiser.

5. The method according to any one of the preceding claims, further comprising conducting a campaign to market the advertiser's brand concurrently with the product.

6. The method according to any one of the preceding claims, wherein the advertiser is the sole seller of the product.

7. The method according to any one of the preceding claims, wherein the product and the advertiser are in complementary industries.

8. The method according to any one of the preceding claims, further comprising designing the product using elements of the advertiser's brand.

9. The method according to any one of the preceding claims, further comprising using the product as an advertising medium.