There are great advertising opportunities available to businesses wanting to succeed in a difficult environment.

At Monday's half-day media-buying seminar at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel, New Kingston, international media consultant, Robert Cauthorn, outlined a local and diaspora market that is exploding with possibilities.

Addressing over 200 agency and marketing practitioners, he offered new perspectives on on-line, radio and print placements as essential components of a dynamic marketing mix.

Value, he said, is central to advertising in the new environment, and so planners needed to apply more focused strategies in the execution of campaigns.

Focused spending

The international media expert advocated focusing advertising spend across a more specific selection of media over the practice of "spraying advertising dollars everywhere".

Cauthorn highlighted inte-rnational and local conditions and data to support his argument for new approaches to media buying, sharing little-known Internet usage figures with his audience and consumer behaviour patterns currently applied to radio and print buys.

In an address prior Cauthorn's main presentation, president of the Advertising Agencies Association of Jamaica (AAAJ), Arnold Foote, Jr, implored advertisers to engage a more holistic approach to getting their messages to their audiences.

He reminded the attendees that, in an environment of rapidly-evolving technology, it cannot be "business as usual" and that the AAAJ members are strategically positioned to provide both the creative and placement options critically needed in this new media paradigm.

Foote further stressed that emerging new technologies can only strengthen the effectiveness of holistic media placements as they provide additional "touch points for reaching, developing and expanding relationships with the customer base."

Special packages

In its follow-up to the seminar, The Gleaner Company is offering special cross-media packages tailored to meet the needs of advertisers' limited budgets and increased demand for innovative methods of market penetration. Advertisers are invited to access these special packages online at www.go-jamaica.com. This offer will be available for a limited time only.

Some members of the audience left with prizes courtesy of Digicel and Singer and gift vouchers were handed out from The Gleaner Group's Sangster's Bookstores Ltd.

Proceeds from the event will be donated to Martha's House to assist in its rebuilding effort. This adds to the donations received through an appeal made by the newspaper's afternoon publication, The Star, for assistance to the home which was recently gutted by fire.

President of the Advertising Agencies Association of Jamaica (AAAJ), Arnold Foote, Jr (left), with Robert Cauthorn and Marlene Davis, managing director of Gleaner Online Limited.

Robert MacMillan (third left), chairman of Macmillan Advertising Limited, in discussion with Christopher Barnes (right), deputy managing director of the Gleaner Company. Listening in on the discussion are Arnold Foote, Jr, president of the Advertising Agencies Association of Jamaica (AAAJ), (second right); Nordia Craig (left), Gleaner deputy advertising manager, and Yvonne Senior, advertising manager.

Winston Mahfood (left), managing director of The Office Outlet, listens to Peter Lampert, director of client services, at Advertising and Marketing Jamaica Limited, just before the start of Monday's seminar.