Ad Creep. No, I'm not talking about one of the Fruit of the Loom guys, Tom Shane, or even one of those characters off of a Capital One credit card commercial. "Ad Creep" is a concept described in Lucas Conley's book titled, Obsessive Brand Disorder. , which has been described by Publisher's Weekly as "an incisive investigation that illustrates how defenseless consumers are against advertising."
Now, some of us from within the marketing discipline might not agree with 100% of his conclusions, but he does offer some compelling evidence to support his theories. For example, he states that U.S. advertisers have spent more over the last decade than in the four previous decades combined and that the average American is exposed to about 5,000 advertisements per day (according to David Shenk's "Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut). Any of us with a pulse would have to admit that if we stopped for just a moment to review our daily routines, we are bombarded with a lot of branded information. This comes from traditional media channels, such as television, radio, and billboards certainly, but we are increasingly seeing nontraditional media channels emerge that did not even exist a few years ago. For example, many grocery shopping carts now carry branded advertising messages, as do the backs of seats in some public venues, and most men have by now noticed that even public restrooms are not off limits for an eye-level commercial message to a temporarily captive audience.
No complaints? Well, certainly there are occasional protests to such ad proliferation. But Lucas would argue that part of the reason for no widespread and sustained consumerism movement against this explosion of advertisements is because it has happened at what consumer behaviorists refer to as "below difference threshold." You see, if we had awakened from where we were, say, 20 years ago at a much lower adveritising level, to where we are currently, most of us would be shocked by how much things have changed. But since the change has occurred so gradually (see "Boiled Frog Syndrome"), we gradually adjust to the changes and are less likely to react to what may overall be a very significant change in our environment.
My biggest questions (and keep in mind I'm generally pro-marketing) are how far will this progress before we reach the "upper limit" on all of this? Is it psychologically healthy to reach a point where we have no "safe zone" void of advertising content? Do we reach a point where additional messages have little or no impact on consumers because we have learned to simply tune out most or all such messages? What, if any, is the role of government in altering public policy?
While you contemplate some of these questions, here's an entertaining interchange between Conley and Stephen Colbert earlier this week that illustrates some of this debate.