Sponsored content: to blend or not to blend. Part 2

By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative director, etc. / LMMiami.com

• After having been exposed to so much advertising throughout our lifetimes our brains are wired to tune it out by default.
• Should we operate under the presumption that consumers will clam up on us if we are too overt about our intentions of separating them from their money or changing their opinion about something?
• However, there’s the so-called Baader-Meinhof phenomenon or ‘frequency illusion’, a cognitive bias our mind creates when, for instance, you find out that your car lease is about to expire: all of a sudden you start feeling you’re being constantly bombarded by auto ads, they seem to pop up everywhere.
• You thought it was just modern retargeting breaching your privacy, huh?
• Well, in part it is but your brain is greatly responsible too.
• Your gray matter has a mind of its own, you know.
• It is doing your homework for you.
• It is safe to say then that, if you are NOT shopping for a new car, auto ads are an annoying intrusion your mind ignores, whereas if you are indeed looking, auto ads become prominent and even welcomed in your sensory field.
• Oddly enough, a good ad, in the broadest definition of the word, has the ability to both blend in AND stand out.
• It just has to be crafted and targeted properly.
• Now then: according to this logic, advertising should not try to persuade audiences who don’t want to be persuaded.
• You hate my campaign?
• That’s too bad, it was not meant for you anyway.
• To what extent an ad must be forthcoming about its intentions?
• To what extent should it blend in with its surroundings?
• Sponsored content is based on the “when in Rome” premise: advertising must blend in.
• It must never look like an intrusion.
• Has the one-size-fits-all practice of running the same insertion on multiple different media outlets has run its course?
• Consumers are too jaded and will tune your message out if it overtly looks like an ad.
• To be continued next week.