Why Traditional Interruption-Based Advertising Doesn’t Work Anymore

Traditional advertising doesn't work well anymore for a very simple reason - there's too much of it. There are too many companies trying to interrupt consumers to try and sell them something. There's so much ad clutter and noise today that the latest studies show the “majority of consumers boycott companies that bother them with too much advertising.”

In addition, techonolgy provides consumers with every manner of “ad blockers” including TiVo, VCRs and DVD recorders, to cable and satellite TV, to MP3 players and downloadable music, and now satellite radio. Consumers are paying billions to AVOID ADVERTISING, which is why they like it even less if you actually manage to break through and interrupt what they are doing.



Within this blog are some statistics and below are some quotes from the leading advertising and marketing experts who all agree that traditional “interruption-based advertising” has lost its effectiveness and their individual views on the reasons why. And here is why, despite the lack of effectiveness, traditional advertising won't be going away soon.

"TRADITIONAL MARKETING IS NOT DYING - IT'S DEAD!

"The era of marketing as we have known it is over, dead, kaput - and most marketers don't realize it.

"Mass advertising has lost its ability to move the masses. Technology has given people many more options than they had in the past and created a consumer democracy. Everybody has a thousand choices for any product they might want to buy, and there are a million different products competing for their wallets. So marketers increasingly need to find ways to speak to customers individually, or in smaller and smaller groups. With so many choices, each customer has many factors that weight in his or her decisions, so marketers have to find the reasons that speak to particular customers' concerns. Old-style, one-size-fits-all mass marketing can't do this.

"Because old marketing isn't working, every year, earlier and earlier in the marketing year, people are admitting defeat and falling back on ‘Plan B,’ which is, of course, price promotion. Price promotion is definitely on the rise, and the cost of it is going up. That's because when everyone is cutting prices, you have to cut yours even more. The sale that cost you a dime to get three years ago, now costs a quarter, and still, all you are getting is rented volume that is going away as soon as you stop paying for it.

"Every day you can turn to the newspaper's business pages and learn that another company has succeeded to death. It has sold a lot of stuff and gone broke in the process.

Sergio Zyman, former Chief Marketing Officer, Coca Cola

The End of Marketing As We Know It. New York: HarperBusiness, 1999.