I saw a political ad the other day from the guy who picks up Mitt Romney’s trash. He claims that Mitt just doesn’t care about him because he never comes out to give him a Gatorade like other neighbors do on trash day. It made me think that I have not offered a drink to the guys who pick up my trash either, Gatorade or otherwise. It’s not that I don’t care about the trash haulers. I wouldn’t want them to stop picking up my trash each Friday. It’s just that I am usually not around the house when they arrive. I would suspect neither is Mitt Romney. Doesn’t it make you wonder if Barack Obama is offering any treats to the White House trash movers? My guess is, not really, because elections have never been won or lost by how a candidate treats the people who remove his trash. This is a classic distraction ad. It is meant to get people worked up over a non-issue and off the trail of the real issues in the presidential election – the sluggish economy, the national debt, unemployment, illegal immigration, terrorism, world affairs, etc. 

There are some marketing lessons you can learn from political ads, particularly distraction advertising. Lesson #1, people have very short attention spans. We live in a day of information overload. There is a limited amount of time the marketplace will focus on your advertising message. Your marketing has a very short life. The ad I referenced above was trending on news sources for about 24 hours. After that, I could not find it on any news sites’ top 100 list. If you are going to be effective in your marketing, you have to keep it in front of your target constantly. But that has an impact on more than just your ads. For instance, with our own customers, we have seen the average number of time spent viewing a web page has dropped over the past four years. Three minutes used to be the benchmark we used to determine if we had really good content on a web page that was engaging to the viewer. We have downgraded that benchmark. Part of that is we are putting less content and a lot more links on a single web page than we used to. People simply will not spend a lot of time before they are distracted to click on another page. So how do we know we are being effective if the average time is dropping? For one, page views and visits are up across all of our clients’ web sites. But the real test is always sales. If you are selling the products or services you are promoting on the web site, in your ads, in your sales literature, etc., it is working.

Lesson #2 from the world of political ads: little things can become very big things in this day of viral networking. Distraction advertising in politics is baiting the viral cobras to strike. It does not matter if the information is true, if it gets passed through the right channels, it will be viewed by the masses. (In fact it would not surprise me to find out that the man in the video is not really Romney’s trash man.) This is the new way to spread rumors. This can be used against you or for you. Make a public statement slip-up and you could end up as a YouTube joke. Get a disgruntled customer on Twitter and you will have an uphill battle making things right. However, if you want to launch a product and you let out a little information that peaks the interest of your customers, the viral network can be a good thing for you. Think of the buzz Apple created around their new iPhone 5. Most of the talk about the new iPhone has been communicated and perpetuated via social networks. Just make sure you are promoting the right things in the right way. You don’t have to tout all of the features of your product, just one thing at a time. It is bigger, it is faster, it lasts longer, etc. If it creates excitement among your target market, you can use viral marketing to your favor.

Lesson #3: your advertising has to be engaging or you will lose. Distraction marketing is meant to be sensational. Like it or not, the grocery store checkout tabloid method of getting people’s attention works. We have a hard time looking away from sensationalism. Why else would someone pick up a newspaper that claims that a woman gave birth to an alien creature? It is the reason people stop and look at car accidents. It is why the traveling circus of days gone by enticed people to buy tickets to see a bearded woman. Likewise, your advertising has to grab people’s attention. It has to make people want to learn more. How is this done? First, use intrigue to your advantage. Don’t tell the whole story of your product without building in an action point. (See my article, The Element of Intrigue). Intrigue is a very powerful emotion. Use it to your advantage.