stinkypitz said:
Am I a complete idiot who knows nothing about how business works?
Yes--or, at least, nothing about how advertising works. The purpose of advertising isn't to make you think "wow, I need that! I'm going to run right out and buy it!" (unless you're three years old, maybe, and then you have no money anyway). The purpose, instead, is so that you *remember* the company name when you *do* need the product/service they provide. This makes a big difference, it really does. If no one knows who you are or what you do, you aren't going to sell anything. If, instead, they've seen your logo a dozen times in conjunction with something interesting/amusing/attractive/whatever, then you're at least on their list of alternatives to choose from, which means they're orders of magnitude more likely to buy something from you.
Of course, you can go too far and do things like oversaturate your target audience or spend your advertising money on things that don't elicit much response. There's an entire field (marketing) devoted to analyzing and quantifying just such difficult and ephemeral results. While many of us are weary of advertising because a lot of companies go for a spam approach, we should be happy because it pays for a lot of things we'd otherwise have to pay for out of pocket, like broadcast radio and TV and most internet sites. And, hey, the next time we need a tow or want to order a pizza, we just might find something we like because we remembered an ad we saw.
