It Was Hard To Interrupt Back In 1963

I‘ve been re-reading David Ogilvy’s “Confessions of an Advertising Man”. This passage stood out for me:

Competition for the consumer’s attention is becoming more ferocious every year. She is being bombarded by a billion dollars’ worth of advertising every month. Thirty thousand brand names are competing for a place in her memory. If you want your voice to be heard above this ear-splitting barrage, your voice must be unique. It is our business to make our clients’ voices heard above the crowd.

Guess when that was written. It’s an accurate description, after all, of the current problems of interruption marketing. When Ogilvy wrote that, however, there were few alternatives available. Interruption was really all there was. Ogilvy wrote that in 1963.

Of course, things have become worse for advertisers, not only because of an increase in the number of competing brands visible through advertising, but also because advertisers are competing against the inherent scepticism and associated ad-blindness of its target audience. People do all they can now to avoid watching, reading, or hearing advertising. For many, it’s got to the point that an advertisement is a sign of a product’s failure. It’s certainly a sign of the product’s manufacturer failure to engage with its core market.

If the product is seriously worthy of spending millions to promote through a methodology that everyone by now surely knows is generating diminishing returns – to say the least – surely it’s worthy of spending a fraction of that amount engaging directly with the very consumers you hope will buy.

Don’t ask your agency to show you their ideas for your next TV campaign. Ask it how it intends to find the consumers that matter and discuss with them how to make your product better, get those consumers to tell other consumers, and how it intends to measure the success of the campaign.

Here’s the choice. Do you want your ad agency winning creative awards for stylish ads where nobody remembers what was being sold or do you want a campaign that delivers measurable results and is spread by consumer recommendation and conversation?