Why I Think Advertising Wearout Is A Marketer Myth

Marketers grow tired of advertising before consumers do so

I found little empirical evidence that advertising wearout exists for successful executions. Great content has a longer shelf life than you might think. We marketers often want to move on to the next campaign out of personal boredom, not real consumer insight.

Think twice!

I recently encountered what real writers call “writer’s block” — a condition in which an author is unable to produce new work or experiences a creative slowdown. To keep this blog alive, I’ve reshared one of my earlier articles about the power of looking beyond Return on Investment (ROI) to make marketing decisions ( Here is that blog post if you want to have a look at it). While furiously debating with myself what new topic I should start writing about, I ended up selecting an existing article to share. I’ve made peace with the conclusion that something good that proved to have worked in the past could work as well in the future.

In Marketing, we encounter writer’s block when we fail to develop that new creative idea to add to our toolkit of existing ideas. We can’t find the insight, we can’t see the strategy, or we can’t agree with our creative and media agencies on the right execution. Our best decision then is to reuse something that worked in the past and bank on the opportunity cost of the time saved to work on a new brand challenge.

Placing the consumer’s hat on our heads helps us recognize that regularly no one is “tired” of seeing our ads, no one except us. Marketers tend to beat the wear-out effect by assuming a particular dullness for an existing creative. You might have worked on that execution for six months, saw it hundreds of times in different formats, but your consumer probably saw it once or twice. When she saw it it was probably while checking her mobile during an ad-break, or scrolling past your precious video in her newsfeed. Give it another opportunity to see.

Don’t underestimate the power of repetition, especially when dealing with a consumer that is really not that engaged in your advertising world. Stop believing in myths, look for facts for advertising wearout.

Photo by Phil Henry on Unsplash

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