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The Serious/Not Serious Series on Jargon

YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS:

Interruptions are a universal nuisance. This is such a fundamental truth that the phrase “rudely interrupted” contains the redundant word “rudely”. There is no other way to be interrupted.

Salmon, for instance, do not eat when they leave the sea and return to their home river to spawn. So why do they bite the bright, colorful feathers presented by the angler? Because there they were floating gracefully thinking about getting laid when they were interrupted.

There is a similar situation for humans. Sitting down at their favorite restaurant, a couple read the menu. As they begin to salivate (partly because of the fare on offer) the fire alarm  goes off, interrupting them, and they have to leave the building. Damn! Don’t you just hate premature evacuations?

Online users are similarly plagued by interruptions; unsolicited offers to click, casinos where they can’t lose, pills guaranteed to increase the length and girth of their penis (Mothers Superior especially hate these), surveys to complete, eternal youth and guaranteed happiness, and any other bait that will be swallowed by the gullible.

The professional interrupters who provide the ads are only kept in business by the fact that some users, like the salmon, react violently to the bait and snap at it. Computer geeks aren’t salmon and don’t have a temper; they only bite humorous ads because they don’t understand them.

SERIOUSLY:

Interruption Marketing is the scruffy cousin of permission marketing and engagement marketing.  It’s a traditional form of marketing. It’s where the marketing message intrudes on the potential customer’s activities and fights for their attention. It’s where the marketer seeks out places where potential customers hang out and then subjects those targets to ads.

Types of marketing which come within this category include PPC Ads (eg Facebook ads, Google PPC), TV ads, Billboard ads, unsolicited marketing emails, newspaper ads.  These ads interrupt your current activity (eg you’re watching television, reading the paper, updating your Facebook Status) in order to bring you the marketing message.

It is widely accepted that interruption marketing is not as effective as other types of marketing such as permission marketing and attraction marketing. As the amount of marketing messages we come across on a daily basis continues to increase, humans are finding creative ways of ignoring these messages. For example, we increasingly tend to become blind to PPC ads in the SERPS and concentrate only on the organic (unpaid) search results.

As we (the customer/consumer) become immune to interruptive marketing techniques, advertisers and marketers are finding new ways to deliver their marketing message.  Hence the steady increase in alternative marketing techniques such as permission marketing, content marketing and engagement marketing.

Although interruption marketing is declining in its effectiveness, it still has a place in today’s marketing bag of tricks. When using interruption marketing as a tool, it’s more important than ever to ensure that you engage the customer as soon as you have interrupted them and got their attention.

RESOURCES:

Susan Gunelius has an informative article over at Entrepreneur.com where she explores the comparative techniques of interruption and engagement marketing. It’s somewhat ironic that a large advertisement/interruptive marketing message appears slap bang in the middle of the piece.  However, it helps to show that interruption marketing is not quite ready to make its funeral arrangements just yet.

Other Jargon Buster Articles:

Attraction Marketing;  Buzz Marketing;  Content Strategy;  Duplicate Content; Linkerati;  PageRank; SEO;  SERPS;  The Cloud; User Experience

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