ADVERTISING AVOIDANCE:
The quiet consumer revolt

We wanted to chart the extent to which individuals actively try to avoid advertising in some media, while they do not mind advertising in others. We quickly found that as many as 22% of Swedes avoid advertising in all traditional media. But it also quickly became clear that there are many different types of advertising avoiders,and that the strategies for success in reaching them must vary.

It is easy to remember the past in a rosy afterglow. In parallel, there is a long-lived and romantic idea that the work of marketers was easier in the past. There were fewer and larger media, consumers waited with excitement and looked forward to taking part of the marketers' new offerings, which not seldom brought with them the hope and promise of the future in a fairly greypost-war period.

This tense and welcoming anticipation has today in many people been replaced by a tiredness and increasing irritation about advertising, which is becoming ever more intrusive. Advertising that is always seeking us out instead of waiting for us to seek it out; and that sometimes makes us feel mugged and in need of fighting it off.


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Source: Research International