Your could say battling information overload is in our DNA: We’ve been preaching, teaching, and writing about how marketing and communications practitioners should consider the effects of information overload for over a decade.
Because infoglut makes it so difficult to break through, as marketers we’ll try just about anything:
- We’ll make our ads bigger. While big ads are usually better than small ads, they cost more.
- We pump up the volume on our radio and television ads. This may get your listener’s attention, but it isn’t message responsible and really doesn’t respect your audience, either.
- We find new ways to interrupt. Whether it’s a breakthrough ad, a telemarketer’s call at dinner, a lumpy mailer, or a humongous billboard like the one being constructed in Times Square, it’s still an interruption.
- We do it more often. If seven times won’t get you to pay attention, maybe seventy will?
In Permission Marketing, Seth Godin sums up the irony of advertising well:
The more they spend, the less it works.
The less it works, the more they spend.
The truth hurts, doesn’t it?
We’re fans of permission here, and use it whenever it makes sense.
But we’re always looking for better ways to responsibly get attention.
Usually, that means pumping up the creativity, not the volume.
So how do you break through responsibly?
I would say ‘pump up the relationship’ – i.e: go where your customers socialize on line and join the conversation. It’s hard work but it can be done now that people are spending more time online in social media.