The Advertising Tyrrany of Too Much

Carl Howe of Blackfriars wrote an opinion entitled The Tyranny of Too Much in which he points out that more isn’t necessarily better in advertising. An over abundance of choices can become confining. I got into reading the Blackfriars’ company blog because they talk about Apple and other interesting players quite a bit, and have since found Carl’s opinion to be on the shortlist of required reading if you want to understand what is going on in the market. Given the trend in advertising to just create more noise, it’s no wonder underground marketing campaigns are gaining steam.

I know from personal experience that I am far more comfortable as a consumer making a choice between 3 items than trying to compare the details of 30. I use tactics like brands and price to cut down on the shear number of choices I have to make at the grocery store. I secretly long for the “good / better / best” arrangement rather than having to wade through the results of shotgun advertising.

The more advertising comes at me, the more I actively block it. I purposely ignore advertising sometimes because of the method. If I get an unsolicited flier in the mail, I will probably make it a point not to buy from the company that sent it because I don’t like to reward them for cluttering up my life.

Technology has come out that drives the cost of advertising to near zero, which has turned into a free-for-all for advertisers. (Spam is a good example of that.) Thankfully technology also gives us things like TiVo that can be used to combat advertising overload. I have become particularly good at nixing ads with my TiVo. It’s one of the thumb sports of the 2000’s, which also include text messaging from cell phones with “numbers only” keypad.

Television ads without a TiVo are murderous. Imagine not being able to skip local car dealership ads featuring some guy shouting at you. These things look like they were produced with a camcorder, a tripod and a circa 1993 Video Toaster. What kind of sales mentality comes out with these things over and over again thinking they will actually break through the noise of everything else bombarding us? They cost money, so someone must be responding to them, but by gosh, WHO?!

American car ads are particularly bad in this area. We have, of course, to mention the fact that Americans make terrible cars. About the only vehicle Americans make that is worth a looking at is a truck. Where else can big knobby controls and oversized everything be considered a feature? The typical American car ad has some crudely designed machine doing 80 on a salt flat or passing an 18-wheeler on a straight road. What fun is it to drive on straight roads, and what car isn’t able to accelerate past a big truck?! It’s no wonder that these ads fail to break through the advertising noise floor.

The whole noise floor is a primary reason for why Google makes money. When I want to be advertised at, I will type whatever I want into Google and see what comes up. A few ads will come up and a few pages in the “natural search” area and I will have a good overview of what my “good options” are. Now you could argue that I’m trusting Google as a brand for this, and you would be absolutely right. That’s what Google does well, they wrote algorithms to distinguish the good from the bad and people reward it because they trust the recommendations. Other brands could come in, but none come remotely close at this point. Microsoft keeps shouting about how they are going to have the world’s best search engine but have yet to deliver.

Companies, in my opinion, should adhere more the “good / better / best” methodology. No one product is going to fit everyone, but having 50 versions of a product won’t fit the market either. Until companies take a “3 major flavors” approach and supermarkets cut down similarly, I don’t think we’ll see the advertising noise floor lowered.

Comments (2)

P Higgs from Television City

Advertising is the tool of the Devil!

PAUL from paul city

revoke the citizernship of all advertisers and send
them to iraq!