Wasted Marketing Assets

For years Madison Avenue's leading thinkers have pondered the same fundamental question: which half of their advertising actually works. Now the industry's research authorities believe they've narrowed the answer down to about 20 percent. In what is likely the grandest post-buy analysis of all time, the Advertising Research Foundation this week will release findings of a review of more than a dozen of the most sophisticated cross-media case studies ever conducted. Its conclusion: about $50 billion in U.S. ad spending is "wasted."
Writes media post
Add to that the ever increasing number of studies (Yankelovich, Chartered Institute of Marketing) which show increasing resistence by customers to interruptive communications, Alan Mitchell's argument that marketing costs for some companies have reached a ratio of 50:50 or higher, And Jim Stengel of P&G saying:

In 1965, 80 per cent of adults in the US could be reached with three 60 second TV spots. In 2002, it required 117 prime time commercials to produce the same result. In the early 1960s, typical day-after recall scores for 60 second prime time TV commercials were about 40 per cent and nearly half of this was elicited without any memory aid. Currently a typical day-after recall score for a 30 second spot is about 18- 20 per cent and virtually no one is able to provide any form of playback without some form of recall stimulate.
The number of brands and messages competing for consumer attention has exploded, and consumers have changed dramatically. They show an increasing lack of tolerance for marketing that is irrelevant to their lives, or that is completely unsolicited. Traditional marketing methods are diluted by a hurried lifestyle, overwhelmed by technology, and often deliberately ignored.
Jim Stengel, Chief Marketing Officer, Procter & Gamble. 2003.

One can see there has to be another way. Its what we call engagement marketing Moving from just in case to just in time marketing communications.