To all the marketers out there banging your head against a wall wondering why your advertising is ignored. The answer is simple. Most recipients of your advertising messages aren't demanders of it.

Most people, when they are exposed to your advertising - due to availability, timing, gender, money and a million other reasons - simply aren't in the market for your product.

The implications are obvious. If your audience aren't in the market for your product and therefore not demanders of your message, then they just won’t care about your (message) advertising. And if they don't care about your advertising you're wasting your money.

And because wasting money is bad, you, and we as an industry, need to reevaluate our obsession with message-oriented marketing (unique selling propositions etc.).

Says Gossage "The real fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads. People read what interest them, and sometimes it's an ad."

So, instead of creating advertising that's reminiscent of a sales pitch, what if we created ads that focus on entertaining, instead? Ones that prioritise cut-through over a laundry list of features, that are creative and demand the audience to snap out of their aloof stupors and pay attention to the commercial in front of them.

While people may not be receptive to advertising messages, everyone is receptive to great entertainment.

This isn't just the fanciful musings of an advertising creative. No. This sort of advertising is effective. In fact, it's the only effective sort of advertising, and here's why:

If your audience is entertained by your commercial, they will like it and pay attention. If you achieve this then (assuming you've branded it right) your brand will get fixed in their memory. And if you achieve that, then when your audience are (eventually) in a position to buy you, you have a better chance of that happening because they remember you. (Compared to them not paying attention to your advertising, not remembering you and not buying you).

Christopher Ott