I wrote multiple posts on how boredom gets the brain distracted. When your prospect is distracted, whatever message you’re trying to convey, will get passed over for the next item which takes the prospect’s attention.

The way to fight boredom is to make your message and sometimes your medium interesting. How do you do that?

One way to do that is to create novelty, another could be intrigue /mystery. There could be a lot more. At the end of the day marketing is applied psychology, so human behavior can be checked and incorporated into your marketing.

Novelty can come in various forms – one of the most common ways to attract attention would be to use the word NEW in front of your product and then list out your product attributes which are new and novel.

In the case of mobile phones, they talk of the camera lens or processor generation to showcase novelty. In case of televisions its about the display.

All the above products are commodity products, so people will not pay attention to the messaging / advertising if they don’t see any novelty. In case of consumer products being advertised on television, this is a very big challenge for the product manager, because people change the channel with the remote, the moment they find anything boring.

For the B2B product management or marketing person, especially in the services space, the challenge is a lot tougher in terms of creating novelty. You need to be able to come out with something related to your process or your technology and project it as something unique.

Operating in this space I have had many different experiences with trying to attract attention. Depending on the hierarchy of the B2B people you are trying to attract, the industry that you are targeting everything will make difference to the “novelty ” you are trying to bring out. But that’s what makes product management in the technology space interesting.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!