Saturation: It’s Not Just for Breakfast

Good post by Mike over at Musings, on the dangers of saturation advertising, and advertising in general.

…the most scarce resource we deal with is attention. Since the attention span is shrinking dramatically and since there is much more competition for that scarce resource, advertisers are taking a more brute force approach … The question is, how can an organization effectively communicate its message without alienating the population? That’s a question worth answering.

Indeed.  After a while, you remember that you dislike the commercial, and any value that the advertiser had disappears down the memory hole.  Worse, you get a reaction like Mike’s, which is to do the opposite of what’s desired.

Advertisers need to better understand how people think.  As far as I can tell, the thinking stopped after the graduation, and it goes to rote.  Are there really any decent thinkers out there, trying to get attention in more subtle ways?

All that said, watch how much you click in the future on a blog link based on the catchy title.  We’re all professionals. 🙂