July 31, 2009
No such thing as a magic bullet! - part 2 of 2
It is called the probability to act in Leffler Agency jargon. People consuming media have two bombardments in their lives. The first is message bombardment from advertising products of all sizes and shapes and the second is time choice bombardment based upon the many things consumers can do with their time. Add in the large number of interest combinations that the population at large has and you can see how absolutely difficult it is for a advertiser to capture the public's interest to make a purchase.
Now to the struggling and sometimes overwhelmed advertiser come the magic bullet merchants. There are tons of media products that seem so logical because they are targeted to overcome the probability to act. The problem is that the small numbers of potential customers who consume their messages have the same probability to act as the potential customers who are contacted in much greater numbers by less tightly targeted media.
Many times in our 25-plus years we have come upon ad campaigns that were essentially a combination of small highly targeted pieces that were not performing for a client who needed a much larger contact base. Why was this happening? These pieces were hitting the same small group over and over again. And with a small potential customer contact base and the probability to act factor the same as in a larger base, the sales were not coming.
In the end, it is better to cast a larger net than a smaller one and magic bullets tend to have small nets, but they sound oh so good and logical. With so many choices for people in their 8-10 hours a day when they may be able to act either by internet, in-person or by attending an event, the ad program has to hit a sufficient number of people to induce the desired action, product purchase!
By Bob Leffler
CEO/Owner
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