There are thousands of marketing messages that hit us every day, so we’ve gotten really good at ignoring them. It’s like standing in a crowded room where everyone else is having a conversation. You just tune it out.

Lots of smart people talk about effective marketing being about cutting through that noise, but I don’t think that’s good enough.

It reminds me of the scene in Anchor Man where the guys are yelling, so Steve Carell’s character screams “LOUD NOISES!”

TV commercials are noise, so we ignore them. Some TV commercials are really loud, like during the Superbowl, so we watch those, but only out of a morbid curiosity about their inappropriateness. We’d still rather just go back to watching the football game.

Really interesting TV commercials cut through the noise, so we rewind the Tivo to watch. Not because they’re loud, but because they’re not noise.

So effective marketing is a two step process:

1. Be just loud enough to get attention.

2. Make your message worth paying attention to.

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