“TIVO-justice” is what one ad agency executive calls it.
Television advertising is now subject to TIVO justice in the real world. If the TV ad isn’t memorable, you skip it completely. If the ad is as good (or better) than the program you stop and notice it. You might even show it to a friend or be part of the upload-to-you-tube brigade.
You did this with magazines, tearing out the GREAT ads and saving them or passing it along.
In the new world where attention is the scarce resource, you have to put ALL of your marketing to the TIVO test. If you are sending out a newsletter to market your business, is it worth saving or just a few snipets of info and a pitch (totally disposible)? Will they read, delete, forget and eventually unsubscribe? Probably.
Is that next ad for a job opening that you write comportment-filled-droll or is it a piece of effective prose worth reading twice? Don’t laugh, I’ve seen job opening ads worth saving.
Think of all marketing not worth saving, disposible, as marketing that only works through brute force. You get enough repeitions and maybe you punch through. This is part of the 50% wasted part of the marketing universe. Memorable marketing, however, will reach and persuade people with few impressions. This markeitng will not only pay for itself sooner, it augments the image of the brand. When you save SWAG, you are saving the swag of a memorable brand (at least to you).
Apply this test to all of your marketing activities this week. If you say, “I’m not in the marketing department,” you are wrong. As several gurus would tell you; we are all marketeers. We have day-jobs, but we have to market to build our brand or business. Your marketing comes in the form of acticities that usually interrupt or take space and try to convince someone to do something.:
* Advertising
* Messaging (from internal notes to formal documents)
* A/V components (videos, power points)
* Interactive marketing (blog posts to forum discussions)
* Promotional materials
* Your resume
* Your next talk or meeting presentation
If your resume was a piece of mail in someone’s hands, does it go in the keep pile or the junk mail pile? That is TIVO justice.
Don’t send junk. Junk is expensive to move around are rarely converts to cash. Send gold. It gets saved, polished and passed around. It grows over time. Get the diff, marketeers?
Recommended classic read: The End of Marketing As We Know It by Sergio Zyman (former CMO of Coke and total Curmudgeon)
Recommended current read: Made To Stick by Dan and Chip Heath. (Why some things catch fire and others don’t. This year’s FREAKANOMICS or TIPPING POINT quality point-of-view book and how to create things that no one can forget.)
