One of the chief complaints consumers have about advertising is it is often inappropriate – either wrongly targeted or misdirected. Often, travel agents will blanket their client lists with advertising that betrays a lack of concern for the needs or concerns of the individual client. For example, not everyone is a fan of cruising. Repeated advertisements for a cruise vacation directed at the wrong client will cause the client to doubt the sincerity of the travel agent. If the travel counselor is truly about the service and not the product, if a travel planner’s practice is really client-centric, then the needs and preferences of the client come first and a stream of wrongly directed advertisements will callous the relationship. Read the rest of this entry »

Consumers have a love/hate relationship with advertising. Some advertising is highly regarded, memorized and repeated, passed along virally. Other ads are the subject of scorn and vilification usually reserved for weapons of mass destruction. It is a worthwhile exercise to examine consumer attitudes toward advertising and to discover exactly what about it people find objectionable. Buried there is a lesson we can take back to our own marketing campaigns to ensure that it will be heard and trusted rather than frowned upon. Read the rest of this entry »