Advertising – Now make your product public.
The average consumer, according to the Gallup Organization, sees over 1,500 advertising messages per day. Crayons are a way to break through this “clutter gap," and give consumers something new and interesting. Advertising in general is becoming more personalized. That means that individuals expect to see not only a generic message about the benefits of a product, but a personalized message about how their particular needs can be satisfied by a product. That requires panoply of methods to get to the reader or consumer, including print, Internet, TV and radio campaigns, which can catch the user in many different places in one day.
Advertising agencies must deal with this clutter issue with every campaign. Whereas the number of impressions per user was a key measure of ad effectiveness in the past, the new measure is what ‘sticks,' or what the customers remember of an ad after the end of an ad-cluttered day. That's a much more telling statistic, as the customer must be affected in more than a superficial way in order to create buying behavior.
So what is an advertiser to do to insure that his or her message is getting across to their intended audiences? They can move beyond advertising agencies to using other sources. Sponsorship is one area where firms can differentiate themselves - everything from naming a baseball stadium after their company to sponsoring a local marathon or walk for breast cancer. Free advertising is a new, and relatively underused method to get the name out there. Have you ever wondered, for example, how it is that Gatorade or Nike are so prominently shown during sports activities, despite not being a part of the formal advertisements during the televising of the show? It's no coincidence that athletes are taught to turn the Gatorade logo towards the camera in order to demonstrate their use of the desired product - that's the result of many talented people working with the athletes to make sure that they're holding the right drink at the right time, and that it is prominent next to the athlete's face once the interviews start.
Advertising is a much more complex art than it used to be - and more interesting as a result.