I can honestly tell you that most of what you'd think of as "grassroots" campaign took a little money to do. I'm not talking about a $20,000/mo budget here... or even $200/mo... but certain things just aren't free.

For example I have a band that I just started (www.freedumbdetroit.com) and I never expect to make a dime with it. No one will ever think of me and my band as a commercial enterprise, however I bought a banner for shows $150, t-shirts $250, and hi-jacked bandwith from my business' site (with the permission of my server) to build the freedumbdetroit.com at the annual fee of $100, plus registered my domain name which cost like $40 or so. There is a cost to doing things that are non-profit or "free."

I think if I pass out fliers for a show, which I have to pay for, no one sees that "paid" advertisement and thinks "what's the catch?" they just throw it on the sidewalk. But I digress...

No professional marketer would create ads (paid or otherwise) that turned off more people than they turned on. But remember that your ability to be totally magnetic to some people is always in direct proportion to your willingness to be totally repellent to others.

Anyhow, I'm glad we're kicking around marketing ideas again. I think there is a lot of potential... it just takes someone with some say-so to really co-ordinate anything worthwhile... and I don't think that they need do more than a couple hours of "work" getting things authorized. One 45 minute AIM chat would probably do the trick.