Advertising Fight & Flight

There’s a phrase in our society that describes the behavior of people reacting to a stressful situation. It’s called fight or flight. Apparently, in prehistoric times, people either fought when threatened or ran like hell. Ergo: the fight or flight response.

Today, people engaged in business need to fight and also engage in a little bit of flight. Or more to the point: flighting. It’s a way of getting your business out ahead of the pack without resorting to a duel at dawn.

Flighting, in the advertising vernacular, is a term for a timing pattern in which commercials, or ads, are scheduled to run during intervals that are separated by periods in which no advertising messages appear for the advertised item. Any period of time during which the messages are appearing is called a flight.

The advantage of the flighting technique is that it allows an advertiser who does not have the funds to run spots continuously to conserve money and maximize the impact of the commercials by airing them in flights.

How does it work? Take a 12-week budget and instead of dividing it evenly, double it up every other week. Study reach and frequency: you may well find you’ll find an increase in both.

The upshot is that advertisers will often enjoy residual benefits during the times of advertising inactivity. For the perception will be one of a constant on-air or online presence even though the media buy is not. You’ve fought the battle of the bad economy and won.