I’ve lost track of the number of ad agencies, creative directors, producers, and designers who swing and whiff when it comes to communicating to consumers. There’s no doubt that packaging a message is very important in today’s convergence communication world – web, broadcast, print, live events, et al. But we’ve moved into an era of folly where so many messages are 99.9% packaging and only 1% - or less – of real content.

I think that consumers are the ones who are most sophisticated, discerning, and educated when it comes to what is effective and what isn’t – more sophisticated than much of the creative community gives them credit for. It doesn’t matter what the age, race, income level, geographic location, or political inclination. The fact remains that consumers pay attention to – and retain – messages that tell them something they didn’t know – or reinforce something they did know.

I’ve seen organizations spend millions of dollars on creative TV messages, resulting in minimal response – while someone else produces a short, thoughtful, message with an extremely low budget, resulting in astounding impact and retention. Guess which one kept the eye on the content ball?