Interruption Marketing – AKA “advertising”

TV – There you are totally engaged in your favorite show and then suddenly the screen fades to black and you are attacked with a poorly executed advertisement for soap or something you don’t care about.  It is 3 times as loud as it should be to make sure you can’t do anything else.

Radio – You are bored in your car and you happen upon a radio station that is letting you anonymously indulge your guilty pleasure for Kenny Logins.  Instead of going from “Highway Through the Danger Zone” to “Footloose” you end up with a commercial for used cars

Magazines – You can’t even enjoy what you are reading because they have inserted so many ads and stiff pieces of paper that fall into your lap.  They also put part of the story on 20 different pages like some lousy choose your own adventure book.  (I would always read those straight through and then imagine what I would have chosen)

How do you react? Mute, fast forward, change the station, put the magazine down or go get a soda.

What you wanted was great content, what you got was OK content with lots of interruptions

Does advertising work? Well kind of…not as well as a referral from a friend or a relationship.  But it is true if you interrupt me enough you may catch me humming your Jingle – but that doesn’t mean I like your product, or that I am even a potential customer.