The truth hurts. And here’s the hard honest truth; no one cares about your company, your products, and your messaging – until you make them care.

It gets worse.

Many marketers are making a bad situation even more counterproductive.

The goal is to sell. And to sell, your marketing has to get noticed. It has to look, feel and sound different in a way that your audience will appreciate. And if you’re not engaging them, you’re wasting time and money.

Yet day after day, ad after ad, and post after post, marketers are relentlessly pounding their audiences with mind-numbing, sleep-inducing information. Posting straight up tactical product or service info, without expertly wrapping that information in an interesting story, or tying it to some emotional benefit, is a surefire path to invisibility and anonymity.

Still worse, continually pushing boring information can have an adverse negative affect on your brand. Who among us hasn’t had to block annoying, incessant feeds and email campaigns?

These days, most advertising looks and sounds alike. It’s what’s referred to as the Sea of Sameness. And in the Sea of Sameness, ordinary brands drown. Which is why our mantra of Be Bold or Be Forgotten is more important today than ever. There are so many channels, and so much white noise, that brands have to be smart, and work harder to capture the distracted and limited attention span of customers today. Getting your message out is absolutely important, but HOW you offer it up, HOW you communicate it is perhaps even more important.

Without stopping power, the page will be immediately turned, the video will be skipped, and the scroll will get bypassed.

Three things to keep in mind.

Make it interesting. Make it fun. Make it likable. Just don’t make it boring.

No one ever won over a customer by boring them to tears. Every ad, post, video or email is an opportunity to delight, surprise and inform.

Tools are tools. It’s how you use them that matters.

In any creative endeavor (architecture, film making, furniture design, culinary arts, etc) a certain degree of skill, experience and artistry separates ordinary from extraordinary. Marketing your brand is no different. Only in the best hands will you see the best results.

Think less about ‘more’ and more about ‘better.’

Don’t get caught up in the volume game. Be bold. Stand out. Quality over quantity, with adequate frequency, will win hearts and minds every time. Don’t add to the white noise, leverage creativity to rise above it.