For two decades, marketing has been built around the idea that attention can be bought, delivering more impressions, more reach, and more content across every moment of a consumer’s day. What the industry didn’t anticipate is how consumers have adapted.

According to data highlighted byeMarketer, 93% of consumers skip or block ads whenever possible.In response, brands have done the opposite of what they should be doing – they produced even more content, creating a cycle where visibility increases but attention continues to decline.

The result is a marketing landscape defined by noise. What brands are beginning to realize is that attention alone was never the real goal; connection was. And increasingly, that connection is happening in the real world.

Trade shows represent one of the most significant and publicly visible investments in your marketing calendar. Yet many brands still approach their booth strategy the same way they'd tackle an internal presentation: a few stakeholders and a tight deadline. The “We can just do this in house,” philosophy often signals the beginning of a logistical nightmare.

Brands are spending more than ever on digital media, yet consumers are noticing less of it. Let's face it, most people can see an ad coming a mile away and skip right past it. The over-proliferation of irrelevant, boring, and overtly promotional content has trained consumers to simply ignore it. Then advertisers wonder why performance keeps getting harder to sustain.

Budgets are lean and marketing leaders are consistently asked to do more with less. And, when it comes to experiential campaigns some brands look internally first or turn to PR partners because, on the surface, events might feel like public relations.

Media Contact
Melissa Burns
Director of Marketing & Communications
914-384-0945
mburns@inspiramarketing.com

You convinced your CMO to invest in a brand experience at a music festival. You built the booth, made the investment in the merch, and stocked the samples. Some people showed up, picked up a few samples, left the swag, and...walked away.

There are a few things you can always count on during the Big Game: Snacks will be elite. Someone will burn something in the oven. Rivalry banter will be ruthless. And at least one person will claim they are “only watching for the football,” while never once looking up from their phone.

Most brands think they’re doing experiential marketing when they launch an Instagrammable pop-up or hand out free samples at a sporting event. But the truth is: tactics without strategy are just noise. They might create a quick spike in awareness, but it’s rarely anything that lasts.

Conventional marketing has always focused on the sale, but in today’s world, the wiser investment should be in the relationship that follows. Today’s consumers are armed with more choices and more skepticism than ever before, and while algorithms may know preferences, they don’t earn consumer trust.

Media Contact
Melissa Burns
Director of Marketing & Communications
914-384-0945
mburns@inspiramarketing.com