SATURATION, OVERLOAD AND UBIQUITY
We’re drowning here. More clutter is just not the answer….

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In an effort to be distinctive in a world rapidly being commoditized in every form of communications execution, the answer from many corners of the persuasion game is to secure brand exposure on literally any available two-dimensional surface. Media has been re-defined to mean anything, anytime, everywhere including, but not limited to, foreheads. Yes, there is even an agency touting forehead marketing as the new buzz generating solution.

One advertising executive quoted in a recent New York Times article opines that, “Ubiquity is the new exclusivity,” be it an ad, promotion, online channel or any other turn in the media space. Shopping carts, floors in supermarkets, airline tray tables, men’s urinal wall-scapes, and doctor examination table liners. Consumer eyeballs are under siege.

Despite mounting evidence on the reaction to this senseless sensory overload, consumers are just working harder to tune out, ignore, pass over, and eliminate one-way push style messages from sources that by definition, lack relevance and engagement – let alone credibility.

Fighting fire with gasoline

Faced with a variety of messages in more venues coming from many products in different categories that clamor for limited mental attention, the temptation is to raise the brand voice even louder in an effort to be heard. Worried about the decline of audience numbers in conventional media outlets, while concerned about the splintering of media generally as special interests siphon off audiences, and looking for an answer with TIVO-ing that anoints the so-called “target audience” with a sinister form of avoidance control? The answer, similar to adding gas on a fire, is not to fight the problem with more of the same when the human answer to this media saturation tsunami is simple: erect mental barriers and ignore most of it.

Engagement and relevance: The new paradigm for permission to enter

The answer isn’t toilet seat messaging or other forms of invasion, rather it’s about relevance to the lifestyles of the consumer you’re trying to reach. It’s about educational forms of communication that can carry information and ideas of intrinsic value to the audience. For P&G it was parenting information and advice at their overhauled Web site for Pampers. This is by definition an unselfish kind of outreach intended to establish a relationship and a conversation not just polish a sales message.

Marketers spend money on communications with a purpose in mind: to affect changes in behavior, to cause an action most often described as a purchase. Yet we’re now operating in a world where the consumer is in charge and votes daily on what will be let in and what will be kept out.

Doesn’t it make sense then that understanding the lifestyles interests and concerns of a brand’s audience and looking for ways to help consumers realize their personal passions is a better idea than chasing them around the room with an ever bigger media gong? More than any other time in the history of marketing, our challenge as experts in the field is strategy. Looking for the unique coalescence of brand and consumer interests. Our job is to serve these interests and in doing so to earn our way into the consumer’s confidence and trust. One thing is for sure; you can no longer just buy your way in through sheer tonnage in media.

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