Transcripts

Neale Martin:
A terrifying statistic is that advertisers pay for four thousand, five hundred messages per person per day in this country.

Neale Martin, author of the book Habit: The 95% of Behavior Marketers Ignore…

And what we do as a survival mechanism is we learn to ignore it and that is an adaptive mechanism that the brain does to filter out irrelevant information. And so advertisers have to yell louder and louder to get noticed and as soon as they yell louder, we just ratchet up what our filters screen out.

Advertising can work, says Neale.

The big thing to do is to realize that what the customer wants to do is to simplify his life. But because so much of advertising is self-serving, we have a tendency to discount it, to disbelieve it and therefore it's not helping us make decisions.

So Neale says the best way an advertiser can capture your attention…

Is to say, "I'm not the best insurance company for everybody but if you are a young couple just starting out, we're the perfect company for you." Because what you've just done is you've told lots of people, "Don't waste your time coming to me." But then you're also creating credibility with that young couple because you're saying, "I have designed a package just for where you are in life."

At somethingyoushouldknow.net I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.