Checking the industry pubs to see who was doing what, and mostly focusing on activity from our clients’ competitors, I realized that several companies that had been pretty quiet or whose ads really used to look rather home-made, had suddenly increased frequency, size and caliber of their print advertising. Those were all companies in the same segment as one of our European-based clients, whose print and electronic ad campaign had been running successfully in several well-known publications such as Assembly, Machine Design and Design World.
It was a good reminder — your advertising efforts have several audiences, and one of them is your competitors. They pay close attention to what you’re doing, as you pay close attention to what they are doing! And your communication activity can worry them or scare them, even. Feels good.