Getting The Message To Our Fast-Paced and Mobile Society

In a world of over-stimulation, an over abundance of choices and an excess of information, a message can get lost in the clutter or quickly deleted without being viewed. Throw in the mobility of our society and the desire for information at our fingertips; even the computer can take a backseat to the cell phone, PDA and mobile device. It is a dichotomy of people wanting it now and yet an attitude of don’t invade my world.

The following data shows just how overwhelming our advertising world can be and the negative affect it can have.

• 65% of consumers feel "constantly bombarded with too much advertising"• 69% are "interested in products or services that would help skip or block marketing"• 54% "avoid buying products that overwhelm with advertising and marketing"[1]

We need a new model if we want to effectively reach consumers. Rather than bombarding them with messages trying to get their attention to buy, it is about creating a message they seek. It is having something they want that meets their needs on their schedule. It is doing a 180 and enticing the consumer to find us. When they come looking they are more receptive to our message and it needs to have relevance and simplicity to quickly capture their attention.

Let’s use the analogy of driving down the freeway. There are multiple stimuli that require our attention in order to successfully navigate the roadways without crashing. Billboards are strategically placed along these roadways to catch our attention and the message is simple enough to be absorbed in a few moments as we go whizzing by. In this case, simple is king and it elicits a response of no interest, slight interest and gets filed in the back of the mind or a high interest to find out more.

The takeaway from this is to think billboard when designing emails or even webpages. People’s lives are whizzing by on the freeway of life. You only have a few moments to capture their attention while they are being bombarded by a whole lot of other stimuli.

[1] http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/1981/Our-Society-s-Growing-ADD-and-Multitasking-Implications-for-B2B-Marketing.aspx