Here’s a new mantra to meditate on—Media is free, attention is not. In other words, if your advertising is attention getting enough, people pass it around, it becomes famous, and in effect, the media costs you nothing. This little aphorism, coined by Seth Godin, is the complete opposite of the traditional TV world where you pay for the media and the attention comes with it.
“Now we live in an attention economy, where the most in-demand commodity is “eyeballs.” Says Laura Miller of Salon Magazine. “As more options crowd the menu, direct appeals to the reactive mind in the form of bright colors or allusions to sex, aggression, tasty foods and so on, take over.”
Easy right? Not so fast.
It’s not about how much money you spend on the creative, it’s about big, unusual this-is-just-crazy-enough-to-work ideas and completely unexpected executions. It’s about making FAMOUS advertising part of the mission.
So what are the new rules?
ADVERTISE TO KILLER BEES. Killer Bees respond to bright colours and loud noises. In our ADHD, constantly distracted world, you need to capture attention immediately. Is it intriguing and unexpected from the very first frame? Use slapstick, quick cuts, odd music and sound effects. Maintain attention.
You can’t take your eyes off of this one.
SIZE DOESN’T MATTER.You are online. The media’s free, remember? Your ads can be any length–5 second blips, 30 seconds or 5 minutes. Whatever your story dictates. Just make sure every frame is building your story. You don’t need lengthy and gratuitous product sell. If they like you, if you’re famous, your website will be overrun.
BE CURRENT. TMobile in England created a flashmob in Trafalgar Square in London getting 13,500 people to sing Hey Jude. Absolutely of the moment and charming and riveting.
UGLY WORKS TOO. Beautiful sunset vistas set against swelling violins may be nice, but the quality of picture and sound online really doesn’t matter. It’s about the idea. How bad can it be and still be great? Look at this from GEICO as part of their online campaign.
FREE YOURSELF There are a lot of censors for TV commercials. Online you have more freedom to create more sophisticated messages for narrower target audiences that people will want to pass along.
Like this one for a great big company called IKEA.
WOULD I SHARE? This is the most brutal test. Is it good enough to send to a friend. Is it entertaining enough—funny, outrageous, involving, make me cry. Do I get an emotional response that I would send along to other people and would make me look good in their eyes.
Ray Ban makes it outrageous for a younger target group in this spot.
By the way, if you check the hits on all the spots linked here, you’ll see that they had enormous appeal, seen by millions and of course, all the media was free.
So time to pay attention.