Oh no. I’m standing in a clothing boutique when I happen to glance over and see they have a penny candy section. I immediately start to sweat. What if….they have them. What if I glance over and see the tell-tail red shape. Uh oh…..I’m in trouble. They do have them….lots of them. I feel myself starting to lose control.
They say when you get in a situation like this to remove yourself from it, walk away, call a friend for support, call your sponsor. Unfortunately, I don’t have a sponsor. You see, I am addicted to….Swedish Fish. As of yet, I have not found a Swedish Fish Anonymous support group, so I’ve been battling this addiction on my own.
….without much success.
Usually I buy them in the big bags, but in the case of this store, they were individually wrapped. I guess the idea is people only buy one or two at a time.
I picked up 37. (feeling somewhat guilty I did leave a handful in the box)
How do you know you’re addicted to something? You have uncontrollable cravings. You increase the amount of intake with diminishing returns.
The feeling from Madison Avenue is – advertisers are addicted to certain types of advertising mediums. One such medium is television. Advertisers keep buying it up despite increasing prices and diminishing returns.
Ad Age reported that McKinsey & Co. has a new report that finds that by 2010, traditional TV advertising will be one-third as effective as it was in 1990. McKinsey is estimating "a 15% decrease in buying power driving by cost-per-thousand rate increases; a 23% decline in ads viewed due to switching off; a 9% loss of attention to ads due to increased multitasking and a 37% decrease in message impact due to saturation."
Television isn’t alone in the diminishing returns department. People are tuning out all intrusive “push” media. The good news is, they are tuning in participatory “pull” media such as….your website.
Are you addicted to intrusive advertising? Are you afraid if you just stop cold turkey you’ll die? Or should I say, your business will die? Would you like the pain of reduced returns to stop? Here’s an important step you can take – put more of your advertising budget into developing your website. People are there voluntarily. They want to engage with you. Instead of shutting you out, they are tuning you in.
Are you taking full advantage of this opportunity?
Read more about advertisers addictions in this great post by Max Kalehoff.
Off to eat my little red friends....mmmmmm.
There are alternative addictions for marketers. Did you see our post about crack-vertising? ;-)
Posted by: Jeffrey Eisenberg | August 12, 2006 at 12:47 AM