by Paul Herbig

Created on: May 15, 2009   Last Updated: May 16, 2009

We love Advertising, don't we?

The most recent Yankelovich Monitor survey, for example, found that consumers rank advertising among the top five things that need more government regulation. The others: water pollution, toxic wastes, air pollution, and nuclear safety (great company to keep hey!). Estimates are the average American is bombarded by several thousands of marketing messages a day (the current estimate is over 3,000 and the number keeps rising year after year). The glut of information is leading to consumer attention deficit disorder (ADD), the difficulty of getting anyone's attention: as the problem widens, companies must spend ever more money to get their attention.

As users become more immune to pitches, as they become more sophisticated in blocking marketing communications (think TIVO here), as they become more cynical of the messages they do hear, advertisers are being forced to become more intrusive and louder in their messages just to overcome the blockages. One such example of new high in advertising intrusiveness is called Forehead Advertising (Call it in-your-face or on-your head marketing sic!). One English creative marketing agency has contracted college students (at 88 pounds a week) to use their foreheads as advertising space. This is great for students earning their college tuition or assisting them in their huge bar tabs. Many students have no qualms about such behavior, Advertising is everywhere you look; you can't get away from it. I don't see the difference between a message on a billboard and an ad on my forehead, except that I'll be earning money from it being there. Clients are signing up to use the service saying, We want to hit our viewers right between the eyes s what better place to place an ad than on their foreheads.

If this is not enough, and direct marketing of all sorts escalate, a new concept called reverse telemarketing is alienating more consumers in new ways. In this drama, a customer calls customer support or a call center complaining about e-mail, phone, direct mail, etc, about either getting a message you did not want or not getting a message you desired. Although unable to directly assist you, the support person makes a pitch for a product or attempts to cross sell you on another product (a good marketing concept just delivered at a bad time in a customer's lifespan). Just what you needed in your moment of travail.

The call is going out to marketers to market smarter, not harder. Rather than badger

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