Ever notice how just about every hotel room in America comes equipped with a Gideon Bible? The Bibles are there simply there because the church gave them to hotels and the hotels put them in the rooms.
I think an interesting way to promote Objectivism would to have the ARI or some like minded organization donate some of Ayn Rand’s fiction works to hotels, for the purpose of making them room fixtures.
If it were known a priori that hotel guests actually read texts left in their rooms (I would guess that they don’t sit and read the bible), then I would say this is a good idea. Otherwise, I suspect that the costs outweigh the minimal benefits of mere exposure to the Atlas/Fountainhead book cover and/or back/inside-cover blurbs. You’re thinking outside the box, however, keep it up. Maybe ARI could donate a short, attention-grabbing pamphlet that would be strategically placed in the hotel room, instead of stashed in some drawer like the bible?
ARI is donating books … to high schools, mainly. That is the best target to spread the ideas, since young people of that age group are the most susceptible to new philosophic ideas.
They are also working on educating scholars in Objectivism and hope to have a stream of Ph.D’s ready to teach Objectivism in universities. They already have more demand than there is supply of such people.
To help you can contact them about donating directly to the book project, or just donate in general. There’s probably always something to volunteer for too, if you have the time.
Or best of all … get a Ph.D. in philosophy and make yourself available for placement as a professor. 
I’ve always thought an agressive television and radio advertising campaign might do the trick, similar to the church of latter day saints or something, but with much cooler and slicker advertising (not to meantion the truth in our case). Imagine it though, a philosophy advertised on television, now that would be capitalism in action.
Won’t work. Older people already using an implicit philosphy won’t change without a rare and enormous catalytic loss in their value system. Worse, such an advertising campaign will give older people an opportunity to talk down Objectivism to the younger from a position of authority.
Why should we worry about “older peoples” philosophy or how they “talk it down”? I can promise they wouldn’t be able to talk it down very effectively, and definitely not rationally, in front of me.
… aggressive television and radio advertising campaign might do the trick, similar to the church of latter day saints
ARI has limited funds. TV ads are extremely expensive. If I remember right, ARI’s budget is less than $10 million a year. In contrast, the Church of Latter Day Saints spends over $60 million a year (according to their web site) just on humanitarian aid. They have 12 million members worldwide. In the last ten years, they had enough funds to build over 70 new churches.
There are many ways to promote Objectivism. Given its small budget, ARI does an excellent job.
ARI has limited funds. TV ads are extremely expensive. If I remember right, ARI’s budget is less than $10 million a year. In contrast, the Church of Latter Day Saints spends over $60 million a year (according to their web site) just on humanitarian aid. They have 12 million members worldwide. In the last ten years, they had enough funds to build over 70 new churches.
There are many ways to promote Objectivism. Given its small budget, ARI does an excellent job.
And also, I think that direct advertising of Objectivism on television may lump us in with wacky groups like Scientology. I think it’s better to promote Objectivism indirectly, like when people at ARI go out and talk about the war on terror on tv or radio.
I think an interesting way to promote Objectivism would to have the ARI or some like minded organization donate some of Ayn Rand’s fiction works to hotels, for the purpose of making them room fixtures.
Many years ago, Andy Bernstein had a short talk on “How To Spread Objectivism”. One of the items he mentioned was for individuals to place copies of Atlas Shrugged in hotel rooms. (Actually, he went a step further and also advocated removing the Bibles; I have a clear memory of him at a conference holding up a Bible he had taken from his hotel room and getting a pretty good laugh from the audience. I’m not entirely comfortable with that myself. The Gideons are apparently OK with people taking the Bibles if they’re going to read them, but taking them just to prevent other people from reading them smacks of theft. But I digress.)
Andy’s basic point, I think, is valid. You don’t have to wait for ARI. If you travel frequently, buy a case of Rand’s novels and leave them behind in hotel rooms like breadcrumbs. It’s the individualist approach.
The Gideons are apparently OK with people taking the Bibles if they’re going to read them, but taking them just to prevent other people from reading them smacks of theft. But I digress.)
Maybe Andrew was using it as a paperweight, so I guess the Bible is good for something 
Here’s another good option:
“Readers are leaving a trail of free books all over the place”
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/books/138088…crossing05.html
Its called BookCrossing,peopel read a book and place it in a random place for other people to find it .
Objectivists first need to motivate people to pursue Ayn Rand’s work. As it is today, there is no wide-spread motivation for studying philosophy (not even for studying religion). The best way to do this is to advocate Objectivism as a form of psychological self-help. Telling people “You will be happier than you ever thought possible” is very strong motivation, and there’s a lot of interest for self-help psychology in pop-culture. This can be done by the book “Loving Life” by Craig Biddle, Dr. Hurd’s daily columns, and Nathaniel Branden’s (yeah yeah, I know) books on self-esteem (for a few examples). Once people realize the proper motivation, then they will have an incentive to study the entirity of the philosophy.
An altenerative or secondary option would be to create motivation for the study of Objectivism by promoting primarily Objectivist aesthetics as an art movement or primarily Objectivist politics as a political movement. However, there wouldn’t be nearly as much interest for these things.
… today, there is no wide-spread motivation for studying philosophy (not even for studying religion).
I would not conclude that. I think – as you indicated – the motivation manifests itself in the form of psychological self-help. The sales of certain self-help books are among the “Top 20” for the year. [e.g. Dr. Wayne Dyer’s books.]
In regards to my idea or T.V. ads I think you guys have it backwards. The point of the ads is to create interest in something nobody has ever heard of. And you don’t market O’ism simply as a philosophy, but as a way of life. Imagine a simple ad as such: various Objectivists randomly flashed on screen in front of a black background saying things like: “I’m selfish”, “I’m proud”, “Reason is the basis for my morality”, “I love my life”, “I’m an egoist”, “I love capitalism”, and so on. You guys are right these spots would be talked about both positively and negatively, but they would be talked about. Like the old saying goes there no such thing as bad publicity. We would create the market for our ideas. To the people that would naturally attack them or try and put them in the same grouping as things like “Scietology” we could simply respond to these attacks, and let the best ideas win out in the end. Note the previous objection I had already thought of and rejected for the reason given. I had also previously thought of the lack of funding for a television ad campaign, but think of it this way, if ARI solicited donations for the specified purpose of such a campaign, the money would poor in, and even I would offer some and I’m so cheap I don’t give money to anything. If an evil idiot like John Kerry can secure funds to run a presidential campaign, the funds can be secured by Objectivists, one would hope, to essentially do the same. An ad campaign promoting Objectivism. Enough excuses or half-measures. Take our philosophy directly to people so we can possibly live in a rational society in our lifetimes, and not some hypothetical “future”.
I would not conclude that. I think – as you indicated – the motivation manifests itself in the form of psychological self-help. The sales of certain self-help books are among the “Top 20” for the year. [e.g. Dr. Wayne Dyer’s books.]
But the type of self-help books being sold do not lead people to, or require, the study of an integrated philosophy. In order to completely grasp Objectivist ethics and fully benefit from them, Objectivist metaphysics and Objectivist epistemology must first be understood.
I think good publicity would be position statements – essentially ARI Op-Eds in broadcast form. Brief commercials featuring ARI’s position on, say, affirmative action, doctor-assisted suicide, war-on-terror-realted issues, etc.
Many others address these issues, but the Objectivist position is usually slightly different in a way that’s not well-known… and always interesting.
I think you’d pique the interest of a lot of people who already believe in some of these positions, but not entirely consistently. Yet.
I’d love to see such ads. But I’d guess that the cost-benefit of such an expense is not a top priority at ARI.
In related good news: the free-Fountainhead-to-schools program is doing great. In my county, there were over 500 books requested. That’s 500 students next year, 500 the year after that, etc. Same deal for the county immediately south of me. My goal is to turn South Florida into a bastion of Objectivist thought 
The Gideons be damned; they don’t promote the concept of the Right to One’s Own Property in their philosophy.
Of course, their right to own property is in no way contingent on their beliefs. I’m not responsible for what they say and do; I am responsible for what I say and do. I do believe in the Right to One’s Own Property, and I believe that right even applies to other people who disagree with me.
Necessary Truths:
Be careful not to ascribe unnecessary conditions on what particular class of living entities qualify as rights-possessing entities. The sole condition for an independent living entity to quality as rights-possessing is that it have free-will, i.e., a capacity for volitional consciousness, not that it hold the"view that human beings are fundamentally rational creatures and that the universe is a knowable place."
Also, be careful in how you formulate the necessary conditions for someone to violate one’s rights. The act of holding a mystic world-view of existence as such does not result in the violation of other people’s rights simply because the security of one’s rights is not contingent on the adherence of every citizen in a society to a rational view of existence, it is contingent on every citizen in a society respecting one’s primary right, the right to life. And, the only way to violate one’s right to life is to initiate force against them. So, how in hell could the Gideon’s irrational views as such violate one’s right to life? They cannot, because they simply do not represent the initiation of force.
Though you say you’re not in your last paragraph, your first two paragraphs necessarily imply that you’re advocating the violation of the rights of irrational people. It is never moral to violate the rights of anyone. And remember (just in case you mention this as a counter-argument), punishing criminals is not a violation of their rights–they lost their rights the minute they initiated force against another individual.