Expert: Peter Gabany - 7/19/2007

Question
I'm president of the Public Service Club at my high school and we are holding a tennis tournament to raise money for charity/our community service projects. I want to have a banner at the event and/or downtown to advertise for the event and to sell ad space on to raise more money. My town has about 16,000 people in it and we could get a banner stretched across Main Street for about $700. My plan was to buy the double sided 3' x 20' banner and divide it into 12 80" x 18" blocks. We would reserve the middle 4 for our logo and information and use the other 8 for ad space. If we sold all 16 spaces (since it' double sided) we would make about $900 dollars. With an ad the company would also get ad space on our website (www.radfordopen.com) and maybe a listing in a program we would put out at the event. I really have no idea if that is a good plan or not since I know little about advertising. Could you give me some advice?

Answer
This is NOT a bad idea, but I would make the banner only about the event and forget the advertisers. Use the event to show sponsorship support. Since it is a tennis tournament there is ample space to show corporate banners along fences and such. Print corporate logos on brochures, programs and the like and have the companies supply their own banners at their cost - for a fee.

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Pete

Sorry for the late reply but I was on vacation.