My thoughts... People hire me to create radio ad campaigns and to buy media effectively. If they are a business interested in long-term, sustainable growth, (not just a one-time, quick-hit liquidation sale, for instance) I show them how short-term, direct-response campaigns contribute little to their future best interests. It is a consistent "branding" campaign that will--if executed properly--have the best chance for long-term success.
If you're a "this weekend only" art liquidator, you don't need to get into someone's long-term memory. The short-term memory (STM) is all you need, and it's a lot easier to get in there. Just a strong, limited-time offer. But if you expect to be around awhile--and you want to own a piece of mental "real estate," you're going to want to get into the long-term memory (LTM.) Much harder. STM is much like your computer's RAM; LTM is the hard drive. Getting into the hard drive takes a good strategy.
The strategy starts with a strong "Unique Selling Proposition," or (the term I like better) "Differentiating Idea." If you can stand out as "different," it goes a long way toward gaining "mindshare." But even then, in todays incredibly over-communicated society, this doesn't assure you brain entrance. A day's worth of ad messages has been likened to "aiming a fire hose at a teacup." Our minds have become pretty good at filtering out things we don't think we need to hang onto. "Broca's Area" of the brain is thought to be the place that decides what we should and should not store.
Once we have a salient Differentiating Idea, we need to expose prospective minds to our message with sufficient "frequency." I have a fairly sophisticated (albeit unproven) system for determining the number of ads I need to purchase over a one week period on any given radio station. (Based on its total listenership--and "average quarter hour" listenership.) If we don't get enough frequency, sleep (and other factors) tend to erase our message from short-term memory--so that it may never reach LTM. Further, reaching LTM is no guarantee we won't be filed in some relatively insignificant synapse. This may happen if we stop actively supporting our position in the mind with an ongoing campaign of messages.
Generally I will create eight or nine messages for a regular radio advertiser over the course of one year--each airing about 6 to 8 weeks at a time. If we're doing things properly, these messages are not communicating different things--but one thing--the Differentiating Idea. Of course we develop certain aspects of this idea--and tell a variety of stories that lead back to the one idea we want their minds to store. But in the end it's basically the same story--just like the Watchtower Society's.
They've certainly accomplished the task of being "different." They are also "salient" or "relevant" to people who have become convinced that they must please God in order to have happiness or to extend their lives. Their message is bizarre, complicated and flawed enough. If they stray too far from this primary message, people will become even more confused than they already are.
