Psst ... Pass It On

It seems like there's a lot of shouting going on, but nobody is really saying anything. I noticed this during the Winter Olympics while I was watching the finals of the women's figure skating competition. I remember sitting in my favorite chair, fuming over the number of commercials I was being subjected to. The network aired at least six or seven corporate plugs after each skater. Now, don't get me wrong. I realize the importance of advertising, both on the part of the advertisers and on the part of the networks, but my point is that I can't remember what any of those products were. Not a single one. I could make some pretty good guesses, but I simply can't remember for sure.

We have become so desensitized to any particular ad or brand because of the sheer volume of messages we are exposed to. An appropriate analogy might be the interference problem many of you try to solve in your wireless networks, especially in highly congested areas where so many signals are cruising through the air that picking out the wanted signals sometimes is difficult.

The situation is much the same with branding. Our environment has become so commercialized and full of noise that, as a defense mechanism, we subconsciously tune out the majority of it. So many extraneous brands are out there that yours may sometimes have trouble getting through to the consumer.

I decided to conduct my own experiment to see just how many brands an average person is exposed to in a day. I can't claim it to be scientific, but it was enlightening. The idea was to record every brand I heard or saw during a 24-hour period. Although really an impossible task, the experiment was a good indicator of what an average person faces every day. In fact, I was surprised at the number of brands I recorded. Every time I turned around, another one was staring me in the face. (In case you were wondering, I didn't attempt this while driving. A friend drove me to and from work that day.)

I recorded 677 brands in the following categories: 18 wireless; 19 banking related; 25 clothing/beauty/department store; 38 soda/alcohol/cigarettes; 44 convenience store; and 118 restaurant/fast food. The rest were products and services covering a wide array of categories, and there were too many automobiles to count. (I stopped at 152.)

Having spent an entire day immersed in "noise," my advice would be to keep this in mind as you develop your brand and marketing program. Choose your branding vehicles with care. The importance of getting your brand out to the public is undeniable, but perhaps a different approach is in order.

There's something to be said for understatement, and sometimes a whisper captures more attention than a shout. It certainly does in the office. You can talk all you want to in a regular voice, and nobody pays any attention, but as soon as voices drop to a whisper, 10 people suddenly are curious to know what you're talking about.

But if you go with this strategy, keep your message simple. Remember the childhood game where you whisper a secret to your neighbor and tell him to pass it on? By the time the message came full circle, it was hopelessly garbled, which was, of course, the point of the game. A garbled message, however, is the last thing you want to send.

The radio commercials that took forever to get to the point drove me nuts because I had to keep my attention focused long enough to figure out what the brand was. Short, catchy slogans such as "Intel Inside" and Wendy's classic "Where's the Beef?" tend to stick with me.

So, whichever approach you decide to take, keep in mind the number of messages that are competing with yours.

It's a dog-eat-dog world out there. Psst ... pass it on!