Miami Herald (reg req.)

How well does this kind of advertising work?

"We didn't get as much response as we expected," said Marcia Anderson, director of marketing for WOW! Work Out World, which operates seven fitness clubs in New Jersey, including five in Monmouth and Ocean counties. The boxes include coupons that bearers can use for free seven-day trials at the clubs. "We were hoping for a little more of a bounceback with the coupons," she said.

The campaign is a success, though, in creating more awareness of the WOW! Work Out World name, which could eventually translate into more members, she said.
Before giving boxes for free to some restaurants recently, Work Out World paid to have advertising on boxes that were distributed last fall. The boxes bore slogans such as "It takes a lot of dough to make a pizza, but you won't need a lot of dough to join WOW!" "It's corny, I know" said Anderson, but she said the chain wants the public to know it has a sense of fun.

Michael Aaron Rockland, a professor of American studies at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, has some reservations about the increased presence of advertising in daily life.
"We're a capitalist society, so none of this need surprise us," Rockland said. "At the same time, there are issues of good taste." America is about more than profit, and "if we keep going the way we're going, we'll be selling absolutely everything," he said.

Naming rights to the Continental Airlines Arena have been sold, he noted, and the PNC Bank Arts Center. Coca-Cola has a $10 million exclusive contract with Rutgers, a public university, to be the only soft-drink supplier on campus, Rockland said.

"Fifty-thousand faculty, staff and students on campus can't drink anything but Coca-Cola products," he said. "When I'm at a Rutgers basketball game and the announcer says 'It's always Rutgers, it's always Coca-Cola,' I want to throw up."