According to AsiaOne News:

I AM a resident of Hougang, and I would like to highlight the problem of advertisement fliers distributed to HDB flats.

As the new mail boxes in my block can be locked to prevent unsolicited fliers, these fliers end up on the gate of my flat.

There are a few issues that require immediate attention:

1) The fliers are a security risk for households in which the occupants are away for a period of time, or even a few days.

When you have many fliers stuck on your gate, you are announcing to the world that nobody is at home. Who is going to be responsible if our flats are broken into as a result?

2) Fliers blown away from the gate end up as litter.

As residents, we take steps to ensure that our homes will not fall prey to crime when we are away, such as suspending the newspaper delivery, but we have no control over these unwanted fliers.

If we had wanted such fliers, we would have unlocked our mail boxes.

I do not agree with such marketing strategy by companies as they are exposing our homes to crime, and this issue should not be seen as trivial.

Can any responsible authority take appropriate action to prevent crime from happening as a result of these fliers?

- Advertisers must think of more creative ideas to do advertising, I had in my younger days tried a job as a HDB fliers distributor and trust me it’s not a easy job! The load of those heavy stacks of paper cannot be easily distributed alone and paper cuts are frequent.

It’s time to think of alternative ideas to advertise to targeted audiences instead of mass advertising. I had read some marketing technique that can gather real targeted audience with great efficiency.

The usual techniques are through mass medias (TV, Radio, Newspaper, Magazines) but with little follow up and event behind the advertising the money will be wasted. There should be some kind of attractiveness and benefits to the people reading the brochures instead of a bland pushing of the products.

The best way is to be mysterious and stir up the curiosity of the reader or viewers instead of a “Cheap and Best xxx product” or “Join xxx courses”…

It should be a large colorful strange looking item in the public with strange buttons to push….or touch. Anyone who pass by the item will trigger a sound or lights blinking…signal for them to “try me”. The screen will direct the person on what he/she likes in a simple 3 option selection with a attractive instant printable voucher of related interest!

Or give out free samples of related products linking to the actual product that you are selling…like multivitamins have cheap and expensive ones, give out free ones but collect addresses of those free users feedback form and send cut out vouchers for other related medicines.

Give out booklet of “how to invest in gold” and a free gold coin (small ones) and buy back the gold coin at a loss but you will capture the interest of people on how to invest in gold through your company.

Research the demand and work on the changing trends instead of blindly advertising on thing people hate at the most unlikely targets. Sending mass emails of advertising of ipods by apple to Singaporean users who cannot subscribe to AT&T services is a bad investment and seriously flawed marketing campaign.

All these spam of wasted paper in mail boxes are totally irrelevant as most are not even the correct target audiences. The best is to get people to ask for the products instead of pushing products…set competition or events to spread awareness to your products or brand.

Sponsor in things that will gather free advertising like charity events or competitions of a huge audiences. Word of mouth is a powerful tool, forums and chat rooms are great places to discuss “reviews” of your services.

Do the right thing! Save the Earth!

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