Keeping Up With The Date

I just came from the mall and noticed something peculiar about a few of the ads displayed on the kiosks throughout the building. A number of ads highlighting grand openings, promotions, and sales that took place in October and November of 2008 are still up in January 2009. 

Of course, aside from draining the ad budgets of some poor company that needs to hire a new marketing firm, these ads have little (if any) effect on the success of the stores that they’re promoting. After all, who wants to shop at a sale that happened last year?

If you don’t care enough to keep track of and change the dates on your ads from time to time, then your customers won’t care enough to pay attention to you. Why should they? There are plenty of other things to pay attention to.

Ads for things that are going to happen three months ago aren’t a good way to spend money. They’re not a very common occurrence, but it’s still a little strange that they occur at all.