We're going door-to-door! We've been joking about this all week. The pushy salesmen, the in your face marketing blitz and how we all tend to ignore or run away from this approach.
As someone in marketing I see the difficulty to walk that fine line of promoting your product authentically without going overboard. It would be great if word-of-mouth marketing was as easy to get as buying a TV ad but it's not. That's bad for markets in some ways. It certainly used to be easier in the time before we all stopped believing commercials. Once we discovered the inauthentic nature of most advertising we tuned it out. I personally have an allergic reaction to be "sold." I like when it's up front but not when it's too in my face and I find I'm only open to advertisements when I choose to welcome them in, otherwise I change the channel or ignore the ad. I find myself tuning out commercials and opting for downloading commercial-free content…I'm willing to pay for that experience. The internet has changed the way I accept advertisements. Now I want banner ads and contextual advertising more than we want 200 car commercials in a row while I'm trying to get into an episode of Heroes. Commercials have to be more clever, or more subtle or provide value for me. I love the trend of a sponsor buying out all of the advertising time on a show to bring me a show with "limited commercial interruption." I appreciate the gesture so much that I now remember the companies that do it. I almost want a Bud Light because of it…just kidding, but at least I remember the gesture.