I’m SICK of that commercial!

Between cable, DVD, Wii, and Roku, we’ve got five remotes in our living room. The Roku has a purple cloth tab sticking out of the bottom, helping it stand out from the crowd of black remotes.

Who cares, right? What’s REALLY important are the three copies of a political campaign postcard arriving simultaneously in my mailbox yesterday.

I got the message the first time.

Then I discovered a free Roku channel with multiple episodes of a single show. This channel apparently only exists to sell advertising.

To nobody’s surprise, 22-minute shows were extended to 30 minutes, with content salted with blocks of commercials.

But did we really need to see the same political ad consecutively five times?

True, good advertising helps close the deal. An effective campaign includes some broadcast, print, direct mail, publicity, promotion, and online presence.

And success comes from touching your audience from multiple angles so they remember you when they’re ready to buy. Productive communications efforts deliver variations of one message, all leading to the same conclusion.

Repeating the exact same message five times within 3 minutes is counter-productive.

In the next ad blocks came multiple showings of a car ad, followed by the food bank. Obviously, the station had an obligation to show each ad five times.

But was this an effective way to do it…or would customer response have improved if each ad was instead shown once every 6 minutes?

The sponsors knew in advance when the ads would run and apparently didn’t complain. Yet, if they’d watched their own commercial five consecutive times, they’d probably have agreed they were getting diminishing returns.

As you’re considering your own marketing efforts, take time to consider them from the audience’s perspective. Examining your messaging through a customer’s eyes before authorizing distribution may make a huge difference in the way your product or service is perceived.

Don’t get caught up using industry jargon that lay-people won’t easily understand. You’ll only turn people off and lose the sale.

And spread out your messaging. Send the same postcard every few days. Show the same ad a few minutes apart.

Because I guarantee that monotony-inducing strategies do little to help a sponsor’s bottom line. And none of us wants to invest in driving business to the competition.

With that said, I wish you a week of profitable marketing.

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