The Science of Communicating & Marketing Your Business

Fellow IMedia contributor Rob Graham, Principal of LearningCraft, is someone I often cite as an excellent marketing teacher. I wanted to share some of what he taught me because it finishes the above thought nicely.

I had never thought of it that way and he's correct. It doesn't matter if the property is a website, a print magazine, a TV spot, ..., look at the ads and you'll know who they think their audience is. Forget the content as being indicative of audience because the content wouldn't be there without the ads to fund it.

This realization brings us back to "...the difference has to do with advertisers and marketers knowing who's browsing a given property and why" and the original reader's comment that got me there, "Do people respond favorably to '...those terrifying floating and talking heads that are supposed to pass for inventive advertising'?"

Don't like the advertising that's on some property you're interacting with? The first question is, "Are you in that's property's market?" This was something I touched on in When Advertisements Crash, Role Models in Advertising - Beer Cans on the Woodland Path and in Usability Studies 101: Redesign Timing. The worst case scenario is that the individual is debranded, definitely a no-no for marketing and advertising. The best case scenario is that the individual ignores the information (something very difficult to do at a non-conscious level which is where most decisions are made).

But what if you're sure you're in that property's market and the advertising still puts you off? Then someone wasn't doing their job either buying for or selling to that property and you, as the consumer, have room to complain.