A lesson can be learned from all those dot-coms that happily shelled out millions of advertising dollars in an effort to create instant brand awareness.
It doesn’t work.
“As soon as a sound bite got in front of consumers, the dot coms expected them to come stampeding,” Reader’s Digest publisher Dom Rossi said during a session yesterday at the Direct Marketing Days 36th Annual Conference & Exposition in New York. “Consumers said ‘no.'”
Rossi said the old model of creating a sense of awareness to acquire and retain customers has been replaced by a model that creates a need to be chosen.
The task is made all the more complicated by the “incredible” amount of media options available to consumers. For example, the average consumer is exposed to 35,000 commercial messages within a 24-hour period. Ten years ago 50 Web destinations were available compared to the “millions and millions” today and 3,200 magazines are on the market, he said.
“It’s flat out overwhelming the amount of information that’s coming at consumers every single day, saying: ‘Buy me, I’m better’,” Rossi said. “People can’t possibly deal with all that information and consumers to a large degree are checking out.”
Rossi offered the statistics to prove that consumers are turning off to the massive amounts of advertising. He said that 71% of consumers responding to a survey reported that they were overwhelmed by the amount of information and 58% indicated that were unwilling to listen to it all.
Even more startling, 43% said they would stick with a brand that satisfies them, down 11% from the last few years. And only 6% of consumers trust what companies tell them, compared to 66% that trust what older people tell them. “That’s the kind of fallout you get when people are checking out,” he said.
For companies to move from getting noticed, to getting chosen, they need to answer the question that every consumer asks when searching for a product, ‘What role does this brand play in my life?’ and center marketing efforts around the answers, he said.
The 75-year-old Digest is in the process of crafting its own set of words to remind its customers and prospects what the magazine means to them,” he said.
He offered the following guidelines:
* Have an agreed-upon position for the brand.
* Ensure that the position reflects an understanding of the consumer that transcends traditional marketing jargon.
* Express the position in human as well as rational terms.
* The communication must help answer the question, ‘what role does this play in my life?’
* All company employees must be familiar with the position.
* All managers must embrace the position and know how to support it.
* The message should be reflected in the product, service, program development and everything that touches the consumer.
* Stay the course.
“When you think about that consumer, with 35,000 brand impressions coming at them a day, we better be focused,” he said.
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