I’m intrigued by what seems to be an increasing trend in advertising – products and services featured only by implication.

As marketers, we’re faced with an information challenge every day. On the one side, we need to catch consumers’ attention and tell them (quickly, while we have their attention) what our product does and why they need it.

That’s actually quite a challenge, especially in a pressured society with suspicious consumers. You just can’t say enough in a 30-second television or radio spot. Physically. Even if you talk really fast.

It wasn’t always this difficult. Products were simpler, competition for consumer consideration was lower, and consumers were less guarded (and less busy). Early advertising communications were 80% explicit, 20% implicit. The 80% explicit might appear as something like “Try new WonderSoap, makes laundry 30% brighter, so you look as clean as you are”. The 20% implicit would be in the form of the clean house featured, with a happy, healthy family (message being “hey, you too can be as perfect as these people”).

But again, times they are a changin’. Consumers suffer from information and product overload. Given the soap scenario, today there are hundreds of laundry detergents to choose from, each with an extensive list of benefits, and differentiation too subtle to understand easily.

So how can you reach a consumer? Go to 20% explicit, 80% implicit in your messaging compressing information into “external storage” (eg, information not contained in your advertising, but ideally already stored in a person’s brain), while simultaneously motivating the consumer to go do their own research…

What do I mean?

Consider for example recent television ads for “Heroes”, a miniseries about everyday people discovering they have superpowers (surprise). Tthis is not a new concept. So how do you advertise it? One of the most popular advertisements showed one of the female characters attempting suicide by jumping off a bridge… then picking herself up off the ground at the bottom and saying “that was the sixth time” to the camera. Note that there’s no explanation of the series’ thesis beyond the title, nor any explanation of what’s happening to the woman – none of that’s necessary. The advertisement interests viewers, and relies on the block of information pre-cached most of our brains (the comic-book / superhero mythos). We watch the commercial, understand what it’s about, and go seek out more information on the internet.

Similarly, basic products are relying on pre-cached information. A car commercial showed the auto squishing a “spider” made of an animated gas nozzle. Implied statement: we’re super gas-efficient, which is good because it saves you money. A deodorant commercial showed a man mobbed by women. Implied statement: use this because it will make you smell less, which makes you more appealing, which is really what you wanted out of life (as trained into you by every movie you’ve ever seen).

Is this an ongoing trend? I don’t know, but as information density rises and costs to produce advertising increase, I suspect so. My prediction: some day soon there will be an entirely referential ad, like “Remember ‘where’s the beef’? They still don’t have it, we do”. Wait for it…

[ps: Please buy my book. http://buynow.stupidmarketing.com -- and tell your friends!]