We all know that marketing isn’t rocket science. It’s merely telling potential customers about your product, and trying to get them to understand it. It’s just a conversation.
So why do marketers turn to advertising to have this conversation? Not because it’s cheap. I think it’s because it’s obvious. Advertising is everywhere in our society. From billboards and busboards to TV and radio commercials. It’s so inescapable and pervasive, marketers tend to just assume it’s the way to reach their audience. But is it?
Let’s think about it.
Have you ever walked through swampy water and afterward found a leech clinging to your body? Editorial material is almost always surrounded by ads. People who only want to digest the editorial material are often forced to digest the ads at the same time.
You buy a magazine to read the articles, but you get the ads as well. You turn on the television to be entertained by programs, but you still see advertisements. You flip on the radio to hear music or talk shows, and you listen to advertising also. You cruise the Internet looking for information, but you get banner ads at the same time. Ads even attach themselves to the mail and telephone systems. You go to the mailbox and there’s the parasite junk mail. You answer the phone thinking it’s family or a friend and up pops the parasite telemarketer.
Most people don’t want to look at and listen to these ads. People flip the radio dial and the remote control to avoid ads. People rifle through magazines trying to find articles, without even pausing at the pages of advertisements.
In short, people are conditioned to skip ads. They are an interruption as an intrusion on the pleasure of reading an article, listening to music or watching a program.
Because people view advertisements as an intrusion, advertisers have to be extremely clever. They have a lot of obstacles to overcome. They only have a few seconds to get their message through to an audience that doesn’t want to listen. So how do they get attention? The most common way is by using humor. It sort of excuses the interruption. But it’s not always easy to tickle America’s funny bone. It takes a very creative and clever person to come up with the right joke.
Not only do ads have to be clever, they have to be quick. Because advertising is so expensive, ads have to be short. That gives advertisers only a few short lines to talk about their product.
Suddenly marketing through advertising becomes rocket science.
