In these times of improved mediums of media and communication, do we still require advertising flyers that flood the mailboxes, slips of paper that are left on the screens of our cars or even leaflets slipped under our doors. Isn't the Internet a new wave of media and communication?
The daily task of opening mailboxes found at our lift lobbies can prove to be quite a chore, especially so when one finds lots of advertisements stashed in the small mailbox. Note, I am talking about mailboxes that receive snail mails and not those that you have on your computer screen with different folders of 'inbox' , 'outbox' with lots of unlimited space.
Imagine the number of advertisements that we come across everyday. It can be well between 40 - 50 advertisements daily. These advertisements can be in the form of flyers, billboards, placards, radio jingles, sponsors etc and the funny thing is that we often forget about it after taking just a glance at the advertisement.
Back to the advertising flyers which I received in my mail box. I realised it can be frustrating having to throw these slips of papers, some having the size of a business card while some were as big as an A4 sized paper. Can you imagine the number of trees being cut down just for the circulation of these endless advertising? This is simply outrageous.
How often do we keep these flyers that we find in mailboxes? Are they even useful at all? With the Internet age, all we need to do is make a few clicks on the mouse and there, you will find what you need on
Google,
Yahoo or any other search engines that you may be using. So why the need for paper flyers distribution? Isn't this the old school principle of casting a net wide in the open sea hoping to catch numerous fish? I cannot comment much as I am no advertising guru but think again, I am sure when you want to find a cleaning service, you would usually look into the Yellow Pages or just like I mentioned, do a Google search. A Google search not only helps to find the product that you are looking for but even better, you can get feedback by visiting forums that the new media has created, an online platform for open discussions about any topic that one needs.
Don't you think it is a hassle when your hands are already filled with so many bills and government notices yet you still have to sort the mails out and throw the flyers away? Maybe we should just have an individual 'junk' box like those that we have in our virtual world. We can perhaps label this new box as 'Spam' box.
Close your eyes and think. See yourself walking towards the mailbox. Two of them in front of you. To the left, a normal mailbox that stores your bills and government notices and to the right, a 'Spam' mailbox where all advertisements are placed. You decide not to look into the 'Spam' box but only that of your normal mailbox. You press a button on the 'Spam' mailbox and whatever is in the box will just flush itself into a recyling bin. No hassle, no need to filter unwanted junk mail.
If someone could really invent mailboxes of that sort, we can save paper and at the same time send out a message to the advertisers to think of better ways of advertising rather than to place flyers into mailboxes. This will also save the cleaners in our neighbourhood the extra job of picking littered advertising flyers often found on the floors near our mailboxes.
Shouldn't the need for distribution of flyers evolve in these new times of media and communication? Just my thought.
