This is an early Christmas post. I mean, you have to have one don't you. It is the moment that I personally look forward to the Coca Cola 'Holidays are coming' and whatever the next John Lewis advert and toy will be. But, this is more of an observation that caught me a little by surprise.
We know we are exposed to more advertising than ever before and that most messages are filtered out. In contrast to that I witnessed something that really made some people pay attention to the products and even make sure they made 'the list'.
It was the discovery of an Argos catalogue at my children's grandparents. I have never witnessed excitement like it. The grandchildren all gathered around the book and then started randomly shouting out the toys that seemed to look good on the page. A lot of paw patrol and tractors for my nephews The bit that was fascinating for me, was this quote from my youngest.
"But, how else would you know what to ask Father Christmas for?"
Thankfully, they don't use my tactic which was to see 'cool' gadgets from the A-Team, James Bond or Star Wars, and request the things you definitely couldn't buy, like the James Bond shoes with a hidden compartment. Quite what I thought I'd need that for, I still don't know. I can only imagine my parents desperately trying to convince me that maybe it was a bean bag that I really wanted. I even remember being very disappointed that the Lego didn't 'build itself' as it had done in the advert. My father finding it amusing how long I was prepared to stare at it after tipping it on the floor and waiting for the 'magic' to begin.
I digress, but the reality was that I hadn't really appreciated how few ads my own children actually see. I'm aware they aren't representative of children generally, they are lucky that most of what they watch is on BBC or subscription, Netflix & Disney. In addition, they currently love dancing and leaping about to search an extent that they don't watch YouTube much and haven't yet become obsessed with social media. I'm very aware that it will all change as they get older. But, quite simply they don't really see that many ads. C4 currently winning on this because they are constantly watching dance mums, and they see a lot of betting ads if they watch the football with me.
I think this is becoming a broader reality and to Scott Galloways point is why Podcasts are currently becoming so valuable as they seem to be a place where the adverts are still accepted and 'less' avoided. It also puts more pressure on us to make sure what we do is noticed. But importantly for me, it's a reminder not to always assume that the thing that will grab attention is the new shiny thing. Just maybe, it's the media we used to use a lot, but for whatever reason forgot about and we just need to make it interesting again.