Spammy thoughts about spam, spam, spam...

[limeybrit]

My chain of productive thinking having just been destroyed by the nearby loitering of the local marketing bod who laughs like a hyena on crack every other sentence, I decided instead to document a random thought on intrusive advertising - a thought brought about by several folk's recent LJ comments on AIM ads & my own experiences with yahoo pop-up

Comments

[zanian0]

Makes me think to a Simpsons episode a saw a few days involving Navy recruiting. The three pronged attack with Subliminal, Liminal, and Superliminal ("Hey! Join the Navy!").

But that's pretty much true. I'd classify most advertising now as Superliminal. (Even though it's not a real word.) They try and saturate us with as many ads as they can fit into our eyes and ears. Sure, this won't work, and will even annoy us, but we're not the targets for this type of advertising.

They're after the lower 95th percentile. Those that don't see the forest for the trees... You know, people that think buying a Hummer urban assault vehicle is necessary for city life. They don't think about making a better product, they think about making their product more available. The theory that if you hear the name or jingle enough it'll keep your head ringing until you buy whatever useless item that Corporate America churns out.

[limeybrit]

Sadly, I'm inclined to agree about the superliminal - but is 95% of the populace really that bone-headed, that you have laser stencil your product name directly onto their retinas to be able to get your message through?

A few years back, there was a trend in Europe for mysterious, or teaser ads, where you'd need to sit & think, or watch several different ads to figure out the sales pitch. Initially, these were actually very successful, but as is oft the case, the marketing droids overdid it & cooked their own geese with a flood of ads that were too damn weird for anyone but the most crazed ad agency staff to understand...

I'd just like to know where the ad agencies get the folks they must have on their focus groups that actually tell them that they'll go buy SpamCo's latest full frontal labotomy device if they have the message slapped into their faces a bazillion times? I have a bridge in London that I'd like to sell them!

[zanian0]

It's like an attack. Just got to keep hitting at their defenses until they finally crack under the onslaught