Is Your Advertising Causing a Drop In IQ?

Studies report that people suffer a drop in their IQ when they are bombarded with too many messages simultaneously.  Advertising messages are no exception.  One study by Kansas State University reported that the CNN-inspired scrolling tickers and headlines on television screens reduced the ability of people to remember information by 10 percentage points: the equivalent of smoking marijuana.  Furthermore, consumers are taking more and more steps to avoid advertising, but often the “solution” by advertisers is to increase the number of messages in their advertisements or on their packaging.

I see this all the time among challenger brands and growth companies.  They feel compelled to get every last bit of information into an ad or packaging to demonstrate that their product or service is truly superior.

The smarter solution: strip away the clutter and aim for simplicity.  This may sound like a no-brainer, but for whatever reason many challenger brands do not practice the restraint they should when putting together their marketing communications. I think it may be due to the fact that they feel a need to get the most value out of their paid media space, and therefore try to cram as many messages as possible.

How is it that powerful brands like Target, Apple, Volkswagen, and In-N-Out Burger connect so deeply with their core consumers?  For starters these brands communicate through imagery rather than words, and connect emotionally with consumers as a result.  They strongly stand for one thing, and by simplifying their message they allow it to cut through the clutter.

New consumer behavior research supports this trend toward simplification.   Research suggests that humans quick filter through a bombardment of messages at any given moment.  We filter out everything except the most visual stimuli that hits us at an emotional level.  This is nothing new to successful brands and advertisers (see Malcolm Gladwell’s book from a few years back: Blink).

Here are three steps to get going on simplifying your communications:

1) Distill your positioning down to its most critical emotional element. Once you’ve defined it stick to it.  Move all secondary messages to your website or to the back of your packaging.

2) Use visual cues to help define your positioning.  Identify colors, shapes, images, and graphics that evoke your positioning. Use these to develop your brand imagery.

3) Step away from that white space!  Practice restraint when wanting to fill your communications with secondary messages.  If the communication is uncluttered and engaging consumers will look at it.

Finally, consumers want to discover your brand.  Brands that just throw all their marketing messages at the consumer at once lose the mystery that makes them engaging and interesting.  They also are not encouraging consumers to start a conversation and most likely will turn consumers off.  It’s like going out on a first date and one of the parties spending the entire time talking only about them.  Interest quickly fades, not to mention it is rude.  The key is to encourage consumers to discover your brand story on their terms, not yours.