attention marketing

A recent study asked people to draw logos of well-known brands from memory. Most of them failed, but does it matter?

The study, which prompted drawings that ranged from nutty my-four-year-old-did-it, to the occasional picture perfect rendering, was conducted by signs.com, which is in the sign-making business. It was a brilliant PR stunt that got covered in Adweek, New York Times, and Daily Mail.

I’m not sure it tells us anything about logos, though. At least not directly.

In Mindset, psychologist Carol Dweck argues, based on decades of research, that how we see ourselves is a major factor in what we can achieve. If we see our abilities as fixed, we tend not to go very far. However, if we see our capabilities as dynamic and changeable, we will work to improve them and are more likely to attain excellence.

Until fairly recently, the options for marketers were relatively limited. Mass media—TV especially—offered the opportunity to reach millions, but only in the form of short ads sandwiched between lots of other stuff. Other tactics, such as trade shows, offered high engagement, but low reach.

There are certain marketing tactics that drive me nuts, and one of them is using any excuse to capture attention. So I regularly rail against stunts like Old Spice’s viral videos, which I liken to purposeful car wrecks on the side of the purchase funnel road. Its latest — Muscle Music, which features a guy getting his muscles shocked as if his body were playing a song — has accrued 7 million views on Vimeo and almost a million on Facebook.

Dogs have many attributes we’d like to see in our customers – they are completely loyal, usually enthusiastic, and are always happy to see us. That might be too much to hope for from our human customers, but a recent study showed something interesting about how dog brains work that we should keep in mind even when dealing with humans.

Advertisers strive to maximize attention and engagement. They want people to remember seeing their ads. They want maximum brand recall. But it’s possible to have marketing impact without ANY of those things.

Saw The Joneses over the weekend. This movie has kicked up a bunch of articles about stealth marketing and who's using it. As their tagline says, They're not just living the American dream, they're selling it. From MovieWeb:

by: C. Sven Johnson

by: Jon Miller