Brands have to reach people.
No matter how good or worthy you are as a brand, you have to reach people.
If you don’t, they don’t know you exist.
And you have to reach people – the right people – in such a way that they want to pay attention and get involved.
They get involved when you display a belief in something that they believe in too.
I like all that.
It’s hard to do.
But I like it.
Here’s Something I Don’t Like Though.
Imagine you have come from a parallel world, where you and we are (allegedly) intelligent species, and are hearing about this business model for the first time:
Hi.
I’m an advertising opportunity for brands and businesses and I make money in two ways.
So you can visualise this clearly, imagine that I sit at the centre of a bow tie shape, creating or curating decent content that people want to experience. This draws an audience into my space.
To my left, in the left half ‘fan’ of the bow tie are people that you that want reach.
To my right, fanned out in the right half of the bow tie there are people like you. People with something to say or offer.
Here are the two ways I make money…
- I charge brands like you, to my right, for the delivery of messages to the people on my left. I help your messages to reach them. I’ll leave it to you to work out what to say to them and how to say it.
- Secondly, I charge the people to my left to switch off the adverts that I have encouraged you to make and charged you to deliver to them in the first instance. I promote to the people you want to reach that, if they don’t want to hear what you have to say they can pay me money for the privilege. This in itself has three effects. Firstly it makes me more money. Secondly it introduces or reenforces the idea to your audience that the things I have encouraged your brand to create and pay us to deliver on your behalf, are undesirable and interruptive. Thirdly, we are positioned as the hero because – for a fee – we can block out the ‘crap’ that we encouraged you – the brands – to create in the first place.
Anyhow, how should we work together?
Consumers.
I dunno…
Yes. OK. I get it.
The Internet.
But I don’t know about you… my habits as a consumer are changing.
Nowadays, when Grammerly or Wix or some other offering interrupts me or mine, I don’t listen.
I also don’t store them in my memory to use them later, either.
What I do do, is remember not to use them.
They just fucking annoy me.
I don’t want to be sold to at all really, but I certainly don’t want to be interrupted to be sold to in this way.
I don’t want a brand to say:
Hey. Stop being in leisure mode or relaxing mode and immediately move into consumer mode.
No.
Fuck off.
It’s rude.
The Solution.
I’m not sure of the complete solution.
But a big part of it is for brands to first have a true purpose that I can remember easily and that matters to me and others.
Then, politely hang around in my peripheral vision until I am ready for you. Giving me great content that I enjoy and that enhances my life is part of this approach.
And whilst, as I say, I am not sure of exactly the best overall strategy (I’m working on it), I am absolutely positive that elbowing your way in front of my face, my partner’s face or my daughters face – uninvited – does the exact opposite of what you want strategically.
I really, really, really dislike you.
And I hope that an increasing number of people feel the same way too.
