Respect Your Audience

Chris Kortschot

Gone are the days when a company could give a description of their product or service, provide a phone number or website, and pass it off as strategic marketing. It is becoming harder and harder for companies to find creative ways to stand out in the sea businesses begging for attention.

For a marketing communication to stand out from the crowd it has have something that marketers are only now getting their heads around. The best way to get a consumer to remember your product, brand, or whatever you are advertising is to make them want to remember.

Until now, marketing has been the act of coercing or tricking the audience into paying attention and then doing this as many times as it takes for them to remember you. It does not take the creators of Old Spice Guy to see why this model is a little bit flawed.

There are too many ways of giving users enough value to make them voluntarily remember your name for there to be any need for force. Value in this case is being defined as anything that makes the listeners life better regardless of how small.

Value can be delivered in an almost endless variety of ways which is because at the end of the day, people are easy to please. Give them something to chuckle at and they will do the same for you; give them something with no strings attached and they will attach the strings themselves.

Just as you feel the need to pay someone back you feel indebted to, the market respects companies that truly put their customers first and will in time pay it back.

The idea of paying it forward does not only apply to person to person interaction. Humans have a desire for respect and if they are shown that by a corporation, it carries the same feelings they would get from a person.