Make Some Marketing Music

Marketing isn’t that complicated. There are things that people have and there are things that people want.

Marketing works when people see/hear a message that genuinely helps them get what they want. The trouble is a lot of marketing announces itself as a message intended only to get what the marketer wants. Consumers tune those messages out and they simply become an indistinct white noise.

When I’m driving down the highway, I don’t hear the wind noise. It’s there. It can even be relatively loud, but my brain has been conditioned to mask it out. In the same way, our brains have been conditioned to mask out most marketing messages—even loud ones. What I often do hear in the car is the music coming from my speakers. It may even be less decibels than the wind noise, but my brain lets it through the noise barrier because, if it is the right song, it resonates with me and connects at an emotional level.

Marketing can be a pitiful waste or wondrously effective. It all comes down to whether you’re making noise or music.