The Rules of Attraction

In the Attention Economy, the ability to grab eyeballs with your marketing content will determine whether your company succeeds or fails. If people don't notice you, they'll never purchase you. Game over. To be blunt, any communication that fails to get noticed is worthless.

But getting noticed is just the first hurdle. Your communications must also be likeable, memorable and inspire consideration to be effective. This is called building mental availability.

It's also the biggest opportunity to leapfrog over your rivals and steal market share.

A recent study by the research firm Lumen found that 96% of online ads fail to grab more than two seconds of attention. This falls far short of the Attention-Memory Threshold - the absolute lowest standard an ad needs to achieve to grow mental availability.

So how do you make sure all your communications earn the attention, memorability, likeability and consideration your brand deserves?

Below is a small list of things proven to work. Why are we sharing them? Because we know most agencies and in-house teams can’t execute them. They simply don’t have the experience, know-how and talent it takes to pull them off.

1. Be More Interesting, Informative Or Entertaining Than The Medium Where Your Message Appears

Today, you can't buy people's attention you have to earn it. To be noticed, liked, remembered and considered, each and every brand experience you create must be as good or better than anything on the platform where it runs. Your not just competing for attention against other ads, your competing against everything that can distract a potential customer away from your message. Impossible to ignore and hard to forget should be the standards every single one of your brand communications lives or dies by. Stunning imagery combined with compelling copy is still by far the best way to grab attention - whether in static or video executions. Additionally, the image and copy must together surprisingly sell a benefit of buying your brand that they really care about it. Remember, people don't ignore ads; they ignore bad ads. Wherever we we ran the ad to the right – online, outdoor and print – it pulled more than its fair share of attention for the Museum of Life & Science. See the rest of the campaign here.

2. Place Your Ads In Media Proven To Attract More Attention And Memorability

Not all media channels and platforms are equal. Some are way better than others at helping you attract and keep customers’ attention. A recent study by Ebiquity found a stark difference between what advertisers and agencies consider the most effective media and what research proves is most effective. Turns out there’s an interesting psychological effect that helps brands get noticed and remembered with mass market channels like TV, Radio, Print and Out Of Home that doesn’t happen with one-to-one channels like direct mail, social media, online display and email. As Bob Hoffman, The AdContrarian, brilliantly observes:

“For advertising to be effective…it’s not enough for it to be seen by a single person or even by many people. Someone has to know that everyone else has seen it, too.”

Turns out advertising on mass media is a way we humans ensure we stay culturally relevant - that we know about and are buying the right products and services everyone else is. Highly targeted, one-to-one media can’t do that. And that’s just one of the reasons this type of channel doesn’t build mental availability as well as mass market channels. That’s not to say put all your media dollars into mass market. You need both. Mass market media for massive reach that raises awareness, likeability, memorability, consideration and demand. And one-to-one direct channels to harvest that demand. Most marketers have gone all in on direct marketing at the expense brand building. And therein, my friends, lies big opportunity for you.

3. Run Your Ads In Surpising Places

Consider non-traditional media placements to increase impact. Stairwell and escalator risers, elevator doors, bathroom stalls, vehicle wraps, sidewalks and building facades are just a few on a growing list of nontraditional media available that can attract the attention you need. The key is great creative and a high-visibility location where lots of people in your market will see it. While everyone else bought banners at the NCTE education tradeshow, we ran these ads on a stairwell that generated loads of attention for EMC School.

4. Be Wildly Different

It's a fact humans are hard-wired to seek out the novel, surprising and unexpected. If your ads are familiar, predictable and expected they will be ignored. In a market saturated with stuffy golf clubs, Cramer's unpretentious message stood out and was a huge hit. See the rest of the campaign here.

5. But Be Extremely Relevant

Just being different isn't enough. Make sure you have valid insights from qualitative and quantitative research that ID your customers' true wants and needs. Then execute your message in a completely unexpected way. Research shows that kids interested in coding want to learn the Python and Java - fast. We took that insight and made it impossible to ignore and hard to forget in these ads for Coditum.

6. Stand For Something

Almost everyone is scared to take a stand these days. Those who do risk criticism. But those who don't risk irrelevance and invisibility. Most student housing ads promote the party side of college life. Not Sebastian Villages. By taking a stand they went from 85% to 100% occupancy with a waiting list in less than six months. See other work we've created for Burkely Student Communities here and here.

7. Trigger An Emotion

Make people feel something when they see your ads. Research shows humor is a great way to simultaneously grab attention and be more memorable. Who says an industrial flashlight with a magnet can't be funny? Our client was laughing all the way to the bank. To see more work we created for Streamlight go here.

8. Make Headlines.In addition to grabbing the attention of your audience, try to grab the attention of the press. One good article, blog or a segment on a news channel can expand your awareness geometrically. Give on and offline editors, journalists, producers and influencers a heads up about your campaign before you launch it. This online video I created for Triumph boats caught the attention of Inside Edition and the entire boating industry.

In the war against invisibility and forgetability, Immortology would be happy to be your secret weapon. To see more of our work click here.

For a free consultation, please contact me directly.

Thank you for your consideration!

Eternally Yours,

David Smith

CEO, CCO & Founder Of Immortology Advertising

DesignRush, an international site that connects the world’s best brands with the world’s best agencies, recognized Immortolorgy as a Top Agency. Check it out out at here.