Low Attention Spans Require Extreme Marketing

May 17, 2006 — -- Just a couple of decades ago, taking out a half-page ad in the Yellow Pages was considered a good marketing effort and a full-page ad might have been deemed extravagant. But as consumers' attention spans wan, marketing companies have actively tried to address consumers in high-impact ways.

"It's extraordinary how distracted consumers are, and the more they're distracted, the less engaged they are. The less engaged they are, the lower the recall scores. Today we are all experts at multitasking. I'm even guilty of being online while I watch TV and usually only put down the laptop when the phone rings," said Barry Lowenthal, president of Media Kitchen, a new media-focused marketing company in New York City.

The saturation of messages has marketers grappling with how to get through to the consumer. Volkswagen's Jetta "Safe Happens" commercial made a high-impact attempt at capturing eyes by ramming a large truck into the side of a Jetta, making airbags deploy and leaving passengers safe.

That crash ad was so jarring it made its way onto hundreds of Internet blog sites and got people talking.

With the Internet as another source of eyeballs, marketing must be all-encompassing and extreme, said Anne Gallagher, a partner with Extreme Marketing.

"What makes a campaign extreme in today's market is how well it is integrated to the media that touch a target client, whether that includes print, broadcast, Internet, direct mail and face-to-face," Gallagher said.

One example of such extreme marketing comes from GoldenPalace.com, an online gaming site that spent $25,000 to buy 11 cars, print the company's logo on each, and then drive them off a 150-foot cliff in Joplin, Mo. About a thousand people came to see the event, joining a motley crew of life-size figurines: the pope, the Virgin Mary, a rabbi, Michael Jackson and Elvis.

This sort of outrageous stunt is nothing new for GoldenPalace.com, which is known for taking high-stakes when it comes to marketing. Most of the company's marketing stunts, including this one, come from eccentric eBay purchases --