Does it help if no one know who owns it?

The Pattison Group is the third-largest private company on Canada. In 1985 it purchased Ripley.

Now those two facts are only interesting if you notice the name at the bottom left of the Ripley billboard in the photo above. Yes, the owner of the billboard is advertising its own products on the billboard. But since most people don't know of the connection between Pattison and Ripley they would assume that this was a real advertisement from an outside party, not a deal between related parties.

So, who benefits? The customers of billboard companies buy space for a specific period of time,. When that period of time is up the advertisement is replaced by that of another advertiser. But if there is no new customer many billboard companies just leave the old advertisement up. (Hence the out of date Purdy's Easter advertisement that I wrote about in the previous post.)

But I'm increasingly seeing Ripley ads on Pattison billboards. Why? Ripley, a Pattison subsidiary, gets the publicity and Pattison does not have to give free advertising to existing customers. Smart move all round.