Right message at the right time – is message more important ?

I worked a great deal of my professional carrier in media, because I love advertising and branding! I have been brought up with TV as the window to the wonders of the world. Great advertising ideas still remains in my memory: baseline that have been repeated so many times that still today they identify with the brands in my head.

When media vehicles were limited, just having budget to run ads would make the difference. Execution was limited : TV in 30s, one poster 4×3 and a portrait version for print…

Now media vehicles are fragmented, attention span is limited and the number of messages that people receive any day of the year are four fold : messaging counts way more.

It is not only the idea behind the creation, but also the delivery : the way the story is built.

For instance, TV messaging is usually build like a short movie : the emotional (or the problem + resolution) story unfolds over 25 sec until the big reveal over the last five sec – the brand / product.

Online videos are – on average – watched for just over 2 sec. Forget about the build up !

Pragmatism tells companies to put emphasis on brand presence and immediate rewards to encourage brand interest and/or intention to buy. It supports sell out on the short term, but it does not build brand loyalty on the long run.

Memory expert and world champions agree to say that it is mandatory to construct a story to memorise any type of information, even for a long string of unrelated figures.

Once again, it is about the story.

How does a story sink into someone’s brain? It completely depends on the objective and the people your business wishes to reach.

To brief properly a creative agency, you may want to provide them with the answers to the following questions :

1. What is your objective : what do you want the audience to do?
2. Who your audience: what are their values? their lifestyle? and the media they consume? where they would more likely do the action you wish them to do?
3. How complex is your message?
4. Which channel can you use to fill your objective?

It would help to define the specs that your story have to fill to get the right action from the right people. Do not hesitate to do A/B testing to select the most efficient approach to your goal.

Each channel has it set of rules and opportunity to think out of the box, but that would come as a future post. Please subscribe to be informed when the next story is published.

Stay tuned and do not hesitate to request more details.