According to the director of marketing at frog design, innovative marketers don't just build buzz about a product. They make the campaign itself the center of attention:

"How much marketing is good for a product, and how do you draw the line between cool buzz and over-hype? At which point does buzz become an annoyance and distract from the product? Is it a matter of tone, style, or simply volume? Is it the singer, is it the song?

The answer, of course, is far more complicated than these questions would suggest. In any case, what Jana’s comment proves is that marketing itself has become a subject of marketing. In fact, the way you market a product may at times even be more influential in driving a product’s perception than the actual product features. Welcome to the age of meta-marketing. The “making of” story, the plot behind the plot, and the peripheral actions are increasingly clamoring for the center of attention." more>>

Johanna Blakley

According to Esther Franklin, a self-styled "media anthropologist" at Starcom, no one has an attention span anymore. While that might pose a problem to content providers -- and I am one of them -- it's an even bigger problem for the advertising industry. If Law & Order can't hold your attention anymore, then how on earth will a corn chip ad? If a newspaper headline just takes too long to read, then who's gonna look at a Google ad?

As consumers shift their attention across an exponentially expanding media terrain, advertisers are carefully monitoring their movements. The new breed of Mad Men, as those Madison Avenue guys were once called, must figure out not only where the herd is moving, but how tolerant it will be of new sales pitches in new places.