Stealing attention, one ad at a time

It’s an utopian dream to think that all advertising should be interesting and people will enthusiastically spend their time and attention on it. Just not going to happen. Still, the very premise of advertising is that it generates interest and gets people to buy your product. There is a basic conflict there.

Companies try and solve this conflict by interrupting people and finding ways to generate attention against peoples’ will. Drilling the same message into peoples’ brains over and over again and hoping some of it will stick for long enough to get them to purchase your product.

The other road that is less frequently taken is to entertain, intrigue and delight your audience and hoping to catch them off guard for long enough to interest them in your product. This is a better approach to get attention, but not necessarily to sell more product. When you get attention in this way, you are basically dressing up in a clown suit, holding a cute kitten and screaming a joke while expecting people to notice the brand of shoes you are wearing.