Practical ways to advertise a purpose without access to mass media?

Use social media. Twitter, Facebook and the like. If you can make your pitch in a fun and interesting way, people will pick up on it.

Your kit could be on a website and you promote it via Tweets and Facebook posts.

You do need a good hook. Something fun or very different that people will run with. Look at the Kobi thing. Thousands of people jumped on that.

Press releases work well. Google often gives them significant weight when they end up on websites. You can send them for free or pay a service (a little) to do it for you.

Flyers, posters, direct-mail.
Or you could write up a manifesto, run off a hundred copies, laminate them, and distribute them with the direction to pass it to someone else when you’re done.

Also, use community media. Your local community radio or television station or even your local newspaper. You might have trouble with metro/national mainstream media but local community media are often very open to promoting local events. They also probably have social media you could tap into.

Crowdsource it. Build a website. Blog about it and link the blog to the website. Build every kind of social media presence possible and link to the website. Make your pitch on the website and ask for members and contributions to the cause. The contributions you bring in can buy media spots of pay-per-click advertising.

Thanks guys, a couple of things we haven’t tried yet. We’ve done the local media, social media (even ads on google/facebook), got people to pass on flyers only hand to hand. We’re against polluting with flyers. We decided against email newsletters due to it being considered spam. By direct mail @Nullo you mean Snailmail? Haven’t considered that yet.

@Bellatrix what is the Kobi thing exactly? Ran a search on google. Too popular.

I’m considering a call center type thing. How would you feel about an automated call that you can easily avoid if you wanted to, but hang on and talk to a member if you’d like?