I woke to the sound of a hairdryer. I tossed and turned, unable to fall back sleep despite the closed door to the bathroom. It seemed like a minute that was actually an hour when I woke back up. The hum of the hairdryer woke me for a bit and then it actually lulled me back to a slumber.
We are all programmed, for our own safety, to recognize disruptions. We notice the things that are out of the ordinary. The abrupt change from silence to a hairdryer is but one example. Once my mind resolved what it was and got comfortable with the disrupter, it blended in and lost its ability to keep my attention.
Nobody remembers neutral. Nobody remembers things that blend in. The message or value proposition of a company is no different. Messages have to stand out and continue to do so to really get traction and be remembered. Otherwise, they become the hairdryer in the early dawn. They wake you up and then actually lull you back to sleep.
We receive more marketing and advertising messages in a year than you would have in a lifetime 50 years ago. You can receive in excess of 10,000 messages a day. What of all that noise do you remember? You remember the things that stand out. You remember the things that speak to your fears. You remember things that scare you a little. You remember the hairdryers… but only for a while.