History suggests that the first form of advertising evolved in 4000 BC in the form of wall painting, and it has continued to evolve and change ever since. The question is, does advertising still work? The answer is…Yes, but it doesn’t necessarily work like it used to and there are primarily three reasons why:
1.) Lifestyles: Today, people and families go about their daily lives in a much different fashion then we did even 20 years ago. We travel more, spend more time in our cars, more time at work, more time outside and less indoors.
2.) Technology: The internet has trained us to quickly avoid hype as we access only the information and entertainment we want. Consumers who used to absorb TV commercials that interrupted their favorite shows now have remote controls or digital recorders to help them skip past these messages. People who used to get their weather forecasts in the morning paper now get up to the minute weather from radio, TV or online.
3.) Fragmentation: Consumers now face fragmentation on two fronts; they have more places to buy from, and more mediums promoting those places. Depending on which surveys you believe, we are now exposed to somewhere between 2,500 and 5,600 advertising messages per day, including packaging, signage, radio, TV, internet, print and more.
The Bad News… Customers have learned to filter out hyper-communications with their “Mental Ad Block” filter. In a less fragmented environment and before the internet, advertisers succeeded by simply keeping their names in front of the public. Today there are too many names and too many places to simply expose those names for simple name recognition to work.
The Good News… People are still buying products and services based primarily on advertising! In a world of shouting, clutter, and hype, relevant and meaningful messages work better than ever!
The secret is getting people to notice your advertising or “Message”. Once you have mastered the message, your ROI on your advertising dollar will increase dramatically!