by: David Polinchock
I've been traveling this week, so I'm behind in my writing. This was in Ad Age this week and speaks to the clutter problem from both the advertising and consumer POV. In fact, we've added an introduction to our presentations where as I begin the presentation, the a/v team will start to crank up a veritable cacophony of noise, getting louder & louder until it's impossible to hear anything at all. Then we stop it and bring up a slide with:
The final paragraph:
"Anytime there's a new destination for people, like YouTube or mobile phones, the assumption is we've got to find a way to put some ads there," Mr. Barocci said. "That's just going to make things worse because there's no social contract. If mobile-phone companies say, 'We'll reduce your bill if you accept ads,' then that's a contract and that's smart."
We talk about this all the time and see it as a major issue. We wrote about it in Prediction 4: The Advertising Backlash Grows. We talk to people in the industry who are exploring emerging technologies for advertising and most of them are really just looking at how they can throw spots onto whatever they're looking at. Rarely, do we see people truly looking at ways to engage their audience, mostly it's about interrupting or yelling at them.
So take a look at the whole article and let’s see if we can make some changes for the better!
Somewhere between 254 and 5,000 is a number that represents just how many commercial messages an average consumer gets each day. There's no consensus on it, but just about everyone agrees on two things: It's way too high, and the industry's not doing anything to reduce its own overproduction.
That's our clutter problem — and yours.
Shotgun blasts
Like a fly repeatedly bouncing off a closed window, the ad industry is trying to fix the problem by doing more of the same. That is, by creating more ads. What that absurdly cliched mission statement of "cutting through the clutter" has really yielded is an industry that shotgun blasts commercial messages into sexy new places as quick as it can identify them, whether it's emerging digital platforms or nooks and crannies in an increasingly buyable physical world — dry-cleaning bags, coffee cups, door hangers and even houses. Yes, clutter is leading to more clutter.
Link: Advertising Age – Caught in the Clutter Crossfire: Your Brand.
Original post: http://blog.brandexperiencelab.org/experience_manifesto/2007/04/advertising_age.html
