the merrier, the more

When I first heard an advertiser use the saying: "The more, the merrier" I totally agreed. It seemed logical that it's always better to have more money, more exposure and put up ads on more places.

After some time I started to doubt. Is it really the budget that makes a campaign succeed? How come that some companies and non-profits spend very little on campaigns and get lots of attention. Simple. Advertisement is not linear - it's complex. That's why I strongly believe that quality matters over quantity.

You can reach a few million people - but using the wrong method will only annoy them. You can certainly also spend millions of dollars on campaigns that simply suck. Good quality work can spread for free - through the word of mouth.

The rules also counts speaking of connection to people. If you have a few thousand friends on myspace or you sent some direct mailing to a couple of million households you're not exaclty going to have a close relationship with those people. They also won't have a real relationship with you. Having a few people who are dedicated to your thing - real fans - is worth much more. Again quality over quantity.

After all I named my blog "the merrier, the more". Don't get me wrong - big budgets are great. But with a different approach you could get more out of them. Even a free music festival would be a better investment than oldschool billboards, seriously.

To get the design of the blog merrier I'm working on it - please give me another week ;-)