While advertising continues to be a rising career option and media opportunity to interact and inform the public about a product, a recent study posted on Media Week found that more and more ads are victim to the 'A Word' today - Avoidance. This is not good news for advertisers and agencies who are trying to position a product in a positive light and encode it in the the minds of their targeted audiences. I decided to delve further and look at some numbers. Let's look...
Research conducted by Microsoft and Starcom found that between 10% and 15% of adults aged 17-35 are “ad avoiders” - meaning they commonly do not like advertising and find it “annoying.” I did some math based on statistics from the US Census Bureau, and found that this age group consists of more than 64 million people. Therefore, taking only 10% of this group is more than 6.4 million people! 15% is 9.6 million people! Either way, that is a large number of people that do not like ads. It is especially startling for advertisers because this 17-35 age group is beginning to become brand loyal. They also have much purchasing power in areas like cars, household items, and apparel. It is not a good sign when such a large number is actually dodging around their ads.
Therefore, how do we get these people, or at least try, to buy our product? Product placement is the answer, of course! A nice quote by Tom Willerer, director of insights and analytics at Starcom, stated, "We have to think more creatively. It’s about trying to buy what’s not for sale. Is this easy? No. But we’re viewing this as a creative problem to solve. This is the new reality of doing business.” Marketing and advertising has gotten to the point of needing new strategies to reach "avoiding" customers. Product placement should do the trick because it provides less "clutter" and less expectation of seeing an ad, hence less interruption in the flow of a film or TV show. There is no way of escaping product placement, or avoiding it as we shall say, so I am sure this is the one area of marketing that will not be harmed over time. We shall see...
Research conducted by Microsoft and Starcom found that between 10% and 15% of adults aged 17-35 are “ad avoiders” - meaning they commonly do not like advertising and find it “annoying.” I did some math based on statistics from the US Census Bureau, and found that this age group consists of more than 64 million people. Therefore, taking only 10% of this group is more than 6.4 million people! 15% is 9.6 million people! Either way, that is a large number of people that do not like ads. It is especially startling for advertisers because this 17-35 age group is beginning to become brand loyal. They also have much purchasing power in areas like cars, household items, and apparel. It is not a good sign when such a large number is actually dodging around their ads.
Therefore, how do we get these people, or at least try, to buy our product? Product placement is the answer, of course! A nice quote by Tom Willerer, director of insights and analytics at Starcom, stated, "We have to think more creatively. It’s about trying to buy what’s not for sale. Is this easy? No. But we’re viewing this as a creative problem to solve. This is the new reality of doing business.” Marketing and advertising has gotten to the point of needing new strategies to reach "avoiding" customers. Product placement should do the trick because it provides less "clutter" and less expectation of seeing an ad, hence less interruption in the flow of a film or TV show. There is no way of escaping product placement, or avoiding it as we shall say, so I am sure this is the one area of marketing that will not be harmed over time. We shall see...
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