Focus on What Matters to your Customers

I was sitting in a consumer behaviour class watching as the instructor giving out magazines to each table; with the instructions being very simple:

Find an ad that really appeals to you and then present your findings to the class, using the arcane categories provided (I won't list them for your sake).

What I found was absolutely stunning. Instead of focusing on the big picture, people were dissecting the minutiae of every aspect of their chosen ad: logo placement, type font, and other meaningless details that a typical consumer would not even pick up in the 3 second glance they would give an ad. Never mind if they have already ignored magazine ads, or worse, the magazine didn't even appeal to their target market!

When marketers were in control of the message, and people's attention was plentiful, all this minor stuff matters. But in an attention deficit world attempting to discern consumer behaviour techniques from traditional advertising is a complete waste of time.

Sure you may get a response rate of 2-3%, but that means your ad was a 97-98% failure in reaching your target audience! Your time (and money) are better spent looking for ways to channel permissive marketing which has a 60,70,80 (or higher) percent response rate.

Incremental growth of a product almost always comes when your product is in a mature or decilning prodcut life cycle. Instead of pouring over the microscopic ways to discern an ad, try focusing your attention on the "big" strategic idea, where your product is inviting to your audience and can be easily communicated to others.

They say the devil is in the details, and you can see why; devil ideas don't build your brand in the long run!