'It gets your name known, subliminally and cumulatively. It contributes to making the difference between "who?" and "oh, yes, I've heard of them"...'

Exactly. And the quality of the print (that doesn't have to mean expensive, BTW)sends a subliminal message about the quality of the event.

Not to disappear too far up my own bumhole, but there's a fundamental marketing theory about how many times someone needs to see an advert or be exposed to a product before they make a purchasing decision. Now, this figure varies depending whether the product is completely new to the purchaser or whether they have some familiarity with it, but generally speaking, people need to be exposed to it between three and seven times before they'll make a decision about whether to buy it. The cost of the product usually is a factor as well; ie, a festival ticket will take more repeat exposure than a gig ticket. This means that the flyers, the posters, the exit-leafleting, the repeat adverts in magazines, the artist reviews in the press, the websites and even the word-of-mouth are all contributing to that eventual purchasing decision. I'm sure this post will inspire backlash from some of the grass-roots promoters, but folk is part of a wider industry that works within certain parameters, and purchasing is based on product and brand awareness. As I said earlier, you can take this stuff on board or ignore it at your peril.

'This may be different with a band with the instruments on the picture, as people may look at the picture and think "Uhhhmmmm thats interesting, I think I will go and see them". If I put a poster of Vin Garbutt up it wouldn't do a lot in my area as most people wouldn't know who the hell is Vin Garbutt.'

This is presents a slightly different dilemma, and it's about who we're trying to attract to folk gigs. Naturally, a poster of Vin Garbutt in your local train station will attract minimum takeup, but a poster of Vin Garbutt in your local pub that hosts a folk club will achieve a totally different response. Similarly, I don't send folk print out to my audience for contemporary theatre; I send it out to my folk attenders. These truths are self-evident. But can we continue to rely on those same folkies coming to events year on year? How do we convince more of the people in the train station (particulalry some of the younger ones) that they ought to be coming along to folk events? Or should we be worried about this at all, as folk has always had a self-selecting audience, and those dwindling folk club audiences (in some places) will eventually be replaced by the new guard?

I think I'm starting another thread here...