Brand vs. Bland

Five years ago, the average American was exposed to 247 commercial messages each day, according to the Consumer Reports. This year, the average consumer will see or hear 1 million marketing messages—that’s almost 3,000 per day. No human being can pay attention to 3,000 messages every day.

The Better the Story, the Better the Brand
The biggest problem with much of today’s market advertising is that it fights for people’s attention using the tactic of interruption. For instance, a short commercial on television interrupts your favorite show. What do you do? You start channel surfing, right? Or you’re reading a great article and on the opposite page is an ad that is screaming to be noticed or read. More times than not you ignore the ad. Or you’re having dinner with your family and you get a telephone call that interrupts your family time. You take the call and abruptly hang up.

This interruption model used to work when there weren’t so many messages coming at you each day and because consumers used to be more attentive. Today, this pushy marketing approach simply doesn’t work very well. Instead, what you need is a brand story that people actually want to read, listen to and, most importantly, be a part of. That makes for a better brand and a more successful one.

The challenge for today’s brand owners is to persuade potential customers to give you their time and their attention—willingly—and to become engaged in what you are doing with your branding. That takes knowing how to create an intriguing and inviting brand story that someone will actually want to pay attention to.

So ask yourself: What am I doing with my brand that makes it the one that my best prospects will want to pay attention to and engage with? One thing is for sure, using "Yell and Sell" tactics today is not going to be effective.

Tom Wants to Hear Your Branding Issues:
If you are a printing company, or product/services company serving the industry, and would like to be considered for a feature in this blog, please contact Tom Marin for an interview.