Some articles related to changes in consumers’ acceptance or rejection of marketing and advertising:
MediaDailyNews reports that “[a]bout half of consumers surveyed say they’ve noticed brands involved in product placements in movies and television, according to a recent Mediaedge:cia study.” More significantly, the study found that “60 percent of those consumers are willing to try the brands advertised, with the percentages a little higher for TV than movies.”
And the New York Times says that “branded entertainment, in which advertisers show their wares in longer-form narrative films instead of commercials, is barreling ahead.” One key to the approach is subtlety: “The new productions work to avoid seeming like traditional, hard-selling commercials. In the 17 minutes of “The Ecology of Love,” for instance, the protagonist’s Visa card appears for only moments. Likewise, the groundskeeper of “The Scout” rides a Craftsman tractor, but the focus remains on the characters.”
Apparently such new approaches are needed, because, according to the Direct Marketing Association, “[t]he growing intrusiveness of marketing and advertising has led to a saturated marketplace, pushing consumer resistance to an all-time high and causing marketing productivity to plummet, according to a proprietary study by Yankelovich Partners, a leading marketing services consultancy.” Specifically, “60% of consumers have a much more negative opinion of marketing and advertising now than a few years ago; 61% feel the amount of marketing and advertising is out of control; and 65% feel constantly bombarded with too much marketing and advertising.”
Advertising watchdog organization Commercial Alert claims this survey demonstrates that consumers are disgusted by the ubiquity of advertising messages. From an opinion piece by Gary Ruskin of Commercial Alert in today’s AdAge: “Most Americans accept advertising as a part of the circus of life. We at Commercial Alert certainly do. But the advertising industry seems caught up in a death spiral of disrespect. In its desperate clamor to claim the attention of potential shoppers, the industry invents a new intrusive ad mechanism almost every week, until citizens are driven nuts by all the billboards, product placement, junk faxes, pop-unders and all the rest of it.” (Note that the rest of the column is even more histrionic than this paragraph.)