The Internet Has Enough Content, Give People Something Worth Remembering.
The world has never produced so much content, so quickly, for so many people. Yet remarkably little of it stays with us.
Every day, audiences are confronted by advertising campaigns, product launches, emails, videos, opinions, promotions and carefully engineered attempts to capture their attention. Most are seen few are remembered.
That distinction matters, the challenge facing modern marketing is no longer simply how to produce more content. It is how to create something people consider worthy of their attention.
People Are Not Data Points
Marketing has become extraordinarily sophisticated at measuring behaviour, businesses can monitor clicks, searches, viewing time, conversions, abandoned baskets and almost every stage of the customer journey. This information is valuable, but measurement should never be mistaken for understanding. Behind every statistic is a person making a choice.
People buy for reasons that are not always neatly expressed on a dashboard, they buy because something is useful, it saves time, it feels reassuring, desirable or familiar. Sometimes they buy because a product says something about the person they would like to become.
Data can show what happened. Understanding people helps explain why.
Good Marketing requires both, being seen is not the same as being remembered, visibility can be purchased, recognition has to be earned.
There is little value in reaching a million people if, by the following morning, hardly any of them can remember who was speaking to them.
The strongest brands understand the difference. They develop a distinctive voice, a recognisable identity and a customer experience that belongs unmistakably to them.
They do not change personality every time the algorithm changes direction.
Trends have their place, but imitation has a short shelf life. When an entire market begins to look and sound the same, being distinctive becomes a commercial advantage.
The Danger of Trying to Please Everyone
There is a temptation in business to make everything broadly acceptable, remove anything too unusual, soften the language, follow what competitors are doing, test another version. ask another committee, eventually the rough edges disappear and so does the personality, hence wasted their time.
Strong brands make choices, they have studied , researched, qualified in their field of knowledge and understand whom they are speaking to, what they stand for and why a customer should choose them when dozens of alternatives are only a click away.
This is not about manufacturing controversy. It is about having clarity, a useful test is surprisingly simple, remove the logo from an advertisement. Could the same advertisement belong to five competitors?
If the answer is yes, the problem is probably not the logo, it is the identity behind it.
Attention Is Only the Beginning
A viral moment can put a business in front of millions of people. It cannot make those people care, followers are not necessarily customers, views are not loyalty, reach should never be confused with the height of the reputation.
What happens after the attention arrives is far more interesting.
Do people return?
Do they recommend the business without being asked?
Do they search for the brand by name?
Would they notice if it disappeared?
Those are much harder numbers to manufacture, and they tell a far more meaningful story about the strength of a brand. Completion attempts to replicate but always tends to miserably fail.
The Competitive Advantage That Technology Cannot Easily Replicate
Technology will continue to transform marketing. Artificial intelligence will accelerate content production however the Marketer will always remain ten steps ahead, as that is their niche and they always tend to be having the most success and fun in running campaigns.
Human behaviour is rather more stubborn, which helps Marketers and Businesses to satisfy their needs.
Platforms will change, Algorithms will change with them, what will remain valuable is the ability to understand people before the data catches up. That is where good marketing becomes commercial instinct.”
People still appreciate originality, they value convenience, they respond to humour, usefulness, generosity and good ideas. They tell other people when something exceeds their expectations and they remember experiences that made them feel something.
Technology can make marketing faster. It can make it cheaper. It can make it measurable, but none of those things automatically make it meaningful.
Perhaps, then, the most valuable question in marketing is not:
“How do we get more attention?”
“Have we created something worthy of it?”
The businesses that can answer that question convincingly are unlikely to spend quite so much time begging to be noticed.
Nadia Alexander-Khan
Founder | CEO | Film Producer | Executive Marketing Director