Another excellent cartoon by Tom. Advertising isn’t there to compete with other ads, it’s there to break the monotony of the mundane everyday life. When 90% of all advertising goes unnoticed, the problem isn’t that other people are doing it better; it’s that consumers have other priorities on their mind. And unless you break through that barrier you’re screwed. As Bernbach said:
If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic!
If you’ve not read it yet, then I recommend having a look at The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz.
The book is a little bit long and the points are laboured but it is an interesting book about when does too much information actually lead to paralysis? When does it go from liberating to debilitating?
If you’ve not got time for the book, then some clever clogs has create an infographic summarising the key points
I think Rory Sutherland is great, not just for his presentation but also the substance of those. Below are a couple of videos of illustrations done by Moth from a couple of his Ted talks:
If you’ve not heard of this, it is a discipline that plays on the rationality (or irrationality depending on your POV) of economic decisions.
Wikipedia (that source of all knowledge) defines it as:
study the effects of social, cognitive, and emotional factors on the economicdecisions of individuals and institutions and the consequences for market prices, returns, and the resource allocation.
It’s a fascinating subject matter and an immensely complex one. From a marketer’s perspective we need to be aware of the biases and behaviours people have and develop what it termed ‘choice architecture’ – i.e. orchestrating and organising your offerings in such a way as to guide people to the decision you’d like them to make.
There are many branches to BE, and below is an illustration/introduction to it.
Another excellent piece on it is this talk from Rory Sutherland
