Elsewhere, the great and the good of the marketing and advertising worlds talk about the shortening attention span of the customer and the 3000 marketing messages a week all those who live on this tiny island are bombarded with.
There is a school of thought that the consumer now controls the brand, that we all edit a version of our favourite brand to suit ourselves. My Coke will be different from your Coke because of the difference of our personal experiences and desires for the brand. Finding a way to connect emotionally to a customer is tougher than ever.
So we wrap buildings and sponsor television shows. We run ever more controversial, humorous, dynamic and shocking advertising and DM. We talk about 'cut through' as much as we talk about 'reach' and 'conversion'. Media agencies are briefed to be innovative. But how do you get up close and personal with your customer? How do you conduct a conversation instead of a lecture?
According to work carried out by The Henley Centre for Redwood, many people feel that companies waste their time, money and energy when it comes to marketing and advertising. Honouring their need for time-saving, information-rich communication will keep 'brand editors' interested and open-minded.
The internet, magazines (be they consumer, business-to-business or customer), television and radio programming all have multi-dimensional relationships with their users, using narrative structures and story-telling techniques to communicate and educate. Think about the stories you were told as a child and the stories we tell our children today. Inevitably there is a message to be learned, one which is learned intuitively. Editorial content communicates information in an emotionally relevant way. It is the way we absorb information best and is the long form to the short form of advertising.
It provides stories and information that people really want to read.
In addition, according to The Henley Centre, few marketing messages make it past the front door to the home's nerve centre these days. Outdoor advertising reaches the public zone; television, radio and cinema access the social zone; the internet accesses the personal zone - but only magazines access the intimate zone.
Magazines comfort us when we are depressed, make us laugh when we are stressed and give us advice when we are making a purchase. They engage us emotionally. Ask any ten people on any UK high street where they read magazines and you'll get a wide variety of answers: in the bath; on the train; on the sofa; during a break at the office. We choose when and where we want to read them and, because we have the control of the relationship, they quickly become 'our' magazines.
Whatever the marketing problem, breaking down the barriers is getting tougher and tougher. As customers become more sophisticated and more demanding, perhaps Marshall McLuhan's pop culture mantra "the medium is the message" is taking on new relevance.
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