My wife and I love to read newspaper advertising. We cut coupons, we look for bargains and we shop them. Advertising is actually the main reason we subscribe to The Columbian. We think a lot of people are like us.
Why, then, do advertisers use the newspaper’s most irritating ways to try to get subscribers’ attention? When I open the newspaper, I don’t want to have to unwrap the advertising from the front page before I can read it. That wrap advertising goes directly into recycling without us ever looking at it. How about oversized inserts that hang out of the edges of the newspaper? Again, they go right into the recycling without being opened.
While we are sitting at the kitchen table having our morning coffee, we don’t bother to ever unfold those tall, skinny fold-in sheets that many of the grocery stores use to advertise their specials. These fold-ins go unread; in fact, we make it a point not to read them because they are so irritating, and sometimes we don’t read any of the advertising associated with them.
These kinds of advertising gimmicks are like someone shouting at us to get our attention. Like the drop-out subscription cards in magazines. All it does is make us want to eliminate the irritation. Advertisers, wise up. We like nice, clean, descriptive advertising without the obnoxious “shouting.” Otherwise you won’t ever reach us, nor the thousands like us.
