Consistent ads vs. incessant ads

Welcome back to Digital Gravity 💪

Every Friday, we share strategies to help you grow your business with content marketing and reach ‘critical mass’ in the great online game.

This week, Katie shares her take on what happens when companies are a bit too repetitive in their marketing.

Enjoy 👇

🦟 Stop buggin me 🦟

By Katie Conover

Have you ever seen an ad so many times that it makes you hate the company and swear an oath that you’ll never in your life buy a product from them?

That’s what’s been happening to me this week.

Every single time I press play on a YouTube video or Hulu show (no, I don’t pay for ad-free, I’m not made of money!) I keep getting the same company’s ads… and it’s driving me insane.

Principal Financial Group.

Dude. Oh. my. god. 

If I hear this voice actor’s bored voice tell me about their retirement plans one more time, I am going to rip all my hair out. 

Each ad is slightly different, but still the same.

It’s the same script, with different names and skills ad-libbed in. 

Basically, each commercial talks about a personality you work with and how they are indispensable and need a retirement plan. 

Every ad slightly changes the character’s personality, but it’s mostly the same blah blah.

“This is Jane, she’s like this, you need Jane… Jane needs a retirement plan.”

The sentiment is good! Everyone deserves a retirement plan.

But I hear this guy every day. All day. 

I listen to NPR: Tiny Desk on YouTube while I work, so this ad plays every 20ish minutes or so. 

Then when I get out of work, and I wanna relax to M*A*S*H, there it is again!

I can’t take it anymore!

I see it so often that I want revenge. I want the company to actively fail!

Is my hatred simply from seeing all their ads?

Maybe, but I see State Farm ads just as much. Why am I not complaining about their boy Jake?

Well, that’s because each State Farm ad is SUPER different. 

They have the Professor Commercial, the Bate-man campaign, the ‘Like a Good Neighbor’ line. 

And sure, they have more of a budget.

But they also have a variety. And my brain craves variety. 

No one wants the same thing over and over and over again.

After a while, we GET IT, and then after a while after that, we want to jump through the screen and start swinging at everyone on the ad set.

Because I want to see creativity. I want a connection. I want authenticity.  

But Principal Financial Group chose one theme and stuck with it. AND put it EVERYWHERE!

NOT COOL!

Your brand or business needs to respect the time of the viewer. 

It’s not fair to take so much of their time and not give them something in return. 

You should never be persistent to the point of annoyance.

Show the viewer you care enough to be diverse in your content.

If you pop up into someone’s life, you need to say something different each time!

No one wants incessant repetition. 

Consistency is great! Just change things up.

–Katie

News and Shoutouts from Orbit Marketing 📢

The Practical AI Summit 2025 is happening October 2–3 (online).

This event brings together 20 leaders who are using AI to drive real-world business impact in finance, healthcare, climate, software, and more.

I’ll be speaking about various ways we’ve implement AI into our content marketing workflows, especially utilizing Orbit Flows.

You can register here.

BTW - I was given 10 free tickets as a speaker, so the first 10 people to use code “Louis10” will get a free pass…

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