Cutting Through the Clutter

In today's communication environment, one of the biggest challenges is getting your message to stand out. To cut through the clutter, you can't just raise the volume: you need to target your audience very precisely and create a message that immediately catches their attention without resorting to gimmicks or shock value.

As consumers have more and more options for tuning out advertising, communicating a marketing message becomes even more of a challenge. But it's not impossible, as this article in Monday's Wall Street Journal demonstrates. A sample:

Can the marketing stimulus be delivered at a time when the customer has few other distractions?

Marketing messages should target customers at times when they are unoccupied, perhaps even actively seeking some sort of information to process. Consider, for example, an airplane on the landing path into an airport. Sitting upright, with in-flight entertainment and electronic devices switched off, passengers have little to do but to look out of the window and wait for the aircraft to land.

Seeking to capitalize on this opportunity, London-based Ad-Air Group PLC places advertisements flat on the ground over an area as large as five acres alongside flight paths in and out of the world's busiest airports. Depending on their landing approach, passengers are provided with an unrestricted view of an ad for more than 10 seconds.

Read the other four questions and consider how your organization can cut through the clutter instead of just adding more noise.