They say, we are bombarded with thousands of advertising messages each day. Some are in the most unlikely places; above the urinals in public toilets, painted on the inside walls of parking garages and now, on the gas pump handle!

It’s bad enough most of us have to pump our own gas.Long gone are the days when the smiling guy in the mechanic’s hat checked the oil and cleaned the windshield while another guy pumped gas in the tank at a whopping 24 cents a gallon! (Yeah! I’m that old!) Now, we do the pumping, and in many states, we have to stand there and hold on to the pump, because the auto-fill mechanism has been outlawed.

So what do you do while to stand there? There is an ad on top of the pup, hawking a special inside the store. This ad is specially important since so many stations offer pay at the pump. Without seeing the ad, you may not venture into the store to pick up the high profit items. Some more sophisticated stations have small TV screen next to the credit card slot that present a solid stream of color commercials, both local and national.

But the biggest jump in creative advertising is the pump handle. When filling the tank, you have to look at your hand holding the nozzle. And there, on the top, is a pitch for cell phone minutes, or a tasty photo of a sandwich inside.

Radio used to be the only non intrusive advertising medium. Meaning that you could get the commercials while you did something else, as opposed to the newspaper that you had to look at to read and see the ads, or TV that requires you to sit and watch. But gap pump nozzles join radio because your are stuck at the pump. And you have to look at the nozzle. The ad becomes non intrusive. In fact, reading the ad passes the time it takes the pump to push you closer to bankruptcy.

There are national and regional gas pump ad agencies that seek advertisers guaranteeing so many pumps per market. They, in turn, pay the gas station or convenience store a percentage of the revenue.

What can you do with your business to put your message where people can, and must, see it? Are you doing everything you can at your business to exploit empty space to make a sales point?

Grocery stores post their newspaper ad at the door. Many offer piles of flyers in case you left your coupons at home.

Big box stores have discovered the joy of covering a colorful ad with plastic and taping it to the floor so you have to walk on it and you aren’t going to step on something unless you know its safe to do so. Gothca!

Discuss unique adverting possibilities with associates, or people in your same business in other markets. If you think about it, you too, can come up with something as good at the gas nozzle ad.

Read hundreds of small business advertising articles at Small Business Articles

Big Mike McDaniel
http://www.articlesbase.com/advertising-articles/now-what-ads-at-the-gas-pump-89888.html

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