Some information is meant to be delivered in the showroom, or across the sales counter, or on your website, when your customer is actively seeking information.

But that’s not often.

Most of the time, your customer’s hunger is for entertainment, distraction, a heightened awareness, a sense of wonder.

But they don’t call it “a sense of wonder,” or even think of it that way. They think of it as “the news,” or “keeping informed about what’s going on.” But any news reporter who knows how to write a headline will tell you that entertainment, distraction, a heightened awareness, a sense of wonder are what the public secretly craves.

The first two things they teach news reporters are these:

1. “When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.”
2. “You never read about a plane that did not crash.”

So why do so many ad writers insist on writing about the man who got bit by a dog and then flew on a plane that did not crash?

You can be certain your mass media ads are going to be logical, informational, tedious and boring when your ad writer wants to talk to you about your Value Proposition. And you can be certain that ad writer’s training was in direct response, online marketing.

Direct response – “Take Action NOW” marketing – is entirely different from customer bonding.

The purpose of customer bonding is to become the provider that people think of immediately and feel the best about when they – or any of their friends – need what you sell.

Let me say this plainly: Your Value Proposition matters only when your customer is in the showroom, across a sales counter, or on your website, actively seeking information. During any other moment, a Value Proposition is just blah, blah, blah.

Online marketers like to talk about “holding your advertising dollars accountable with measurable, trackable results.” What they don’t like to talk about is the extremely high cost of generating awareness online, especially when compared to the stunningly low cost of becoming a household word through old school, mass media.

Trackable? Mass media has always been trackable. Through the top-line growth of the companies who use it.