Wouldn’t it be better to promote your product in places where people freely stop to listen and learn? Of course it would. So where is that? Where do people slow down and listen? How about when they watch TV? We have all seen the studies that show the average consumer watches two, three, even four hours of TV a day. Or what about when they read the paper or listen to the radio? What about the Inte

Ayn Rand wrote an insightful book called Objectivist Epistemology. To explain knowledge she uses the metaphor of chain links with the first link being an axiom truth. As you progress down the links, they interconnect with other links in a complex network. If you start with an axiom truth, the links hook easily and things make sense. If your thoughts don’t stem from axiom truths, connecting further links is difficult and thought becomes confusing.

Take for example Senator Charlie Rangle’s bill to re-introduce the draft. He argued that if the draft were reinstated, powerful people’s children would be inducted into military service, so their parents would be more cautious about decisions leading to war. He makes a point but it’s no reason for a draft. Rather than starting with an axiom, the basis for his argument was a tangent. When his bill came up it was defeated in the House by a vote of 402-2. The logic was flawed and everyone knew it. You can’t just pick any point in an argument and treat it as an axiom.

So what are the axiom truths of marketing? What are the seminal links that form the basis for product promotion?

Here’s one; Customers must be willing to listen and learn about your product.

Could it be that you’re kidding yourself believing your marketing is being absorbed by an attentive audience, when in reality you’re playing to an empty room?

Not only is it possible, it’s highly likely. We live in a time where people actively seek to erase all sales messages from their lives. They are shutting you out with TiVo, XM Satellite Radio and national do not call lists. And what they can’t block they simply ignore.

So what’s the solution? How can you make consumers listen to your message? I think the Internet ads that take over your screen and won’t let you delete them are the exact opposite of what should be done. You can’t make people listen, they have to want to listen.

Wouldn’t it be better to promote your product in places where people freely stop to listen and learn? Of course it would. So where is that? Where do people slow down and listen? How about when they watch TV? We have all seen the studies that show the average consumer watches two, three, even four hours of TV a day. Or what about when they read the paper or listen to the radio? What about the Inter

Take for example Senator Charlie Rangle’s bill to re-introduce the draft. He argued that if the draft were reinstated, powerful people’s children would be inducted into military service, so their parents would be more cautious about decisions leading to war. He makes a point but it’s no reason for a draft. Rather than starting with an axiom, the basis for his argument was a tangent. When his bill came up it was defeated in the House by a vote of 402-2. The logic was flawed and everyone knew it. You can’t just pick any point in an argument and treat it as an axiom.

So what are the axiom truths of marketing? What are the seminal links that form the basis for product promotion?

Here’s one; Customers must be willing to listen and learn about your product.

Could it be that you’re kidding yourself believing your marketing is being absorbed by an attentive audience, when in reality you’re playing to an empty room?

Not only is it possible, it’s highly likely. We live in a time where people actively seek to erase all sales messages from their lives. They are shutting you out with TiVo, XM Satellite Radio and national do not call lists. And what they can’t block they simply ignore.

So what’s the solution? How can you make consumers listen to your message? I think the Internet ads that take over your screen and won’t let you delete them are the exact opposite of what should be done. You can’t make people listen, they have to want to listen.

Wouldn’t it be better to promote your product in places where people freely stop to listen and learn? Of course it would. So where is that? Where do people slow down and listen? How about when they watch TV? We have all seen the studies that show the average consumer watches two, three, even four hours of TV a day. Or what about when they read the paper or listen to the radio? What about the Inte

So what are the axiom truths of marketing? What are the seminal links that form the basis for product promotion?

Here’s one; Customers must be willing to listen and learn about your product.

Could it be that you’re kidding yourself believing your marketing is being absorbed by an attentive audience, when in reality you’re playing to an empty room?

Not only is it possible, it’s highly likely. We live in a time where people actively seek to erase all sales messages from their lives. They are shutting you out with TiVo, XM Satellite Radio and national do not call lists. And what they can’t block they simply ignore.

So what’s the solution? How can you make consumers listen to your message? I think the Internet ads that take over your screen and won’t let you delete them are the exact opposite of what should be done. You can’t make people listen, they have to want to listen.

Wouldn’t it be better to promote your product in places where people freely stop to listen and learn? Of course it would. So where is that? Where do people slow down and listen? How about when they watch TV? We have all seen the studies that show the average consumer watches two, three, even four hours of TV a day. Or what about when they read the paper or listen to the radio? What about the Inte

So what’s the solution? How can you make consumers listen to your message? I think the Internet ads that take over your screen and won’t let you delete them are the exact opposite of what should be done. You can’t make people listen, they have to want to listen.

Wouldn’t it be better to promote your product in places where people freely stop to listen and learn? Of course it would. So where is that? Where do people slow down and listen? How about when they watch TV? We have all seen the studies that show the average consumer watches two, three, even four hours of TV a day. Or what about when they read the paper or listen to the radio? What about the Inte

Wouldn’t it be better to promote your product in places where people freely stop to listen and learn? Of course it would. So where is that? Where do people slow down and listen? How about when they watch TV? We have all seen the studies that show the average consumer watches two, three, even four hours of TV a day. Or what about when they read the paper or listen to the radio? What about the Internet? Consumers spend lots of time there.

Old school thinking is to weasel in through ads. But if people block the ads but love the content, as a marketer what does that tell you? It tells you to transform your advertising into news and information. If that’s how the consumers want to learn about products, go with the flow. Consumers actually love to learn about products. It’s just that they want to hear about them on their terms.

As president of the nation’s largest pay-per-interview PR firm, I see marketing making a big swing in this direction.

More and more companies are coming to us at Media Relations, Inc. wanting to break the old advertising mold. They want us to take the features and benefits of their product and present them as an interesting story that can be published both in the media and used elsewhere, such as their Web sites.

This emerging trend is something I refer to as Long-Form Advertising™.

Companies that operate from the axiom truth that consumers must be willing to listen to their sales message, are making a course correction that keeps them in line with the consumers’ wishes. Their compass is calibrated on the consumer.

Old habits die hard

If your compass is pointed at traditional marketing, rather than due customer, it will be difficult to break the habit of reducing your sales message rather than expanding it. For 100-plus years marketers have been paring down their copy to accommodate ad sizes. They’ve gotten used to accepting that their marketing is a second-class citizen existing in the shadow of legitimate content.

While breaking out of old advertising habits can be difficult, turning ad messages into news stories is easy. It’s simply a matter of telling your whole product story. When you add the nuances back into the sales message it’s surprising how interesting the stories can become. And who has the ear of the public? Repor