Adverts have been a fact of life, in one way or another, for centuries, but advertising really took off in a big way with the arrival of commercial television and received an extra boost with the arrival of the internet. Now the way in which brands can advertise are probably literally countless. So are the ways in which people can block them. That’s why many astute marketers are now taking a step back and abandoning the strategy of trying to shout louder than everyone else and trying to find more effective, targeted ways of reaching potential customers.
Slowing Down
In keeping with the idea that time (or display space) is money, a lot of adverts worked on the principle of packing as much content as possible into a small time-frame (or space). This can be a huge mistake. It can often be better to give a small amount of quality content room to breathe, so to speak. In some cases, advertisers have pushed this to new lengths by producing adverts where the key feature is the lack of obvious content. Ronseal, Waitrose and Diageo have all adopted this approach recently with extended adverts simply showing a man painting a fence, animals and bees going about their business on a farm and a man silently drinking a glass of whisky respectively.
Targeting Rather Than Broadcasting
The idea of targeted advertising has become something of a buzz word of late and the harsh reality is that some companies are managing the concept massively better than others. Here at the Private Postman, our targeting system is straightforward and effective, we target London’s affluent customers in their own homes. Our system is based on our first-hand knowledge of London. At this point, however, a lot of companies, which claim to be able to offer targeted adverts are really only working on basic demographic data and related assumptions, e.g. that people of a certain age are more likely to have younger children. On the one hand, this generic assumptions are often correct, on the other hand they still result in a significant percentage of adverts being shown to people for whom they are utterly irrelevant and even where they may have relevance, they are shown to people at an arbitrary time and an arbitrary manner which means that they may well miss out on their full potential.
Marketing by Association
Content marketing and product placement are two examples of marketing by association, in fact they’re very closely linked. Increasingly brands are working with influencers of various kinds to produce relevant content which features their products in one way or another. This goes back to the old concept of a person being judged by the company they keep. Here at the Private Postman we only work with high-end companies, which produce the sort of quality leaflets affluent customers find it appropriate to receive. This means that our customers not only avoid having their leaflets delivered with those of rival companies, but also avoid having their leaflets delivered with the sort of budget offerings affluent customers are likely to shun.
