Whether you are dealing with website content or webmedia presentations the focus should be on establishing your primary marketing message in your audience's minds. If that singular message gets lost in a jungle of corporate platitudes and extraneous specifications then the chan

In order to create content or advertising that people will remember, we have to understand a little about how memory works. Professor Daniel Schacter of Harvard University is an expert in the study of human memory and has written numerous books on the subject, including 'The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers'. In this book Schacter describes seven characteristics of human memory that all marketing people need to be aware of in order to construct content and advertising that website audiences will retain.

Transience

Transience refers to the fact that memory degrades over time, our recollections become generic and what we are left with is a sense of expectation rather than specific features.

If you overload your website visitors with a shopping list of features or a series of b-school banalities, you are giving up the opportunity to make a singular impression on your audience, especially if the features you are so proud of are mere duplicates of features offered by your competitors.

You may not remember the specifics of the latest Volvo automobile advertising campaign but you most likely regard Volvos to be safe, the primary focus of their long-term marketing efforts. What Volvo has done is position itself as the manufacturer of safe cars. This is the position they hold in the minds of the car buying public. As an advertiser this should be the focus of their campaigns. If they for some reason decide to change their approach, they stand to confuse and alienate their audience.

Whether you are dealing with website content or webmedia presentations the focus should be on establishing your primary marketing message in your audience's minds. If that singular message gets lost in a jungle of corporate platitudes and extraneous specifications then the chan

In order to create content or advertising that people will remember, we have to understand a little about how memory works. Professor Daniel Schacter of Harvard University is an expert in the study of human memory and has written numerous books on the subject, including 'The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers'. In this book Schacter describes seven characteristics of human memory that all marketing people need to be aware of in order to construct content and advertising that website audiences will retain.

Transience

Transience refers to the fact that memory degrades over time, our recollections become generic and what we are left with is a sense of expectation rather than specific features.

If you overload your website visitors with a shopping list of features or a series of b-school banalities, you are giving up the opportunity to make a singular impression on your audience, especially if the features you are so proud of are mere duplicates of features offered by your competitors.

You may not remember the specifics of the latest Volvo automobile advertising campaign but you most likely regard Volvos to be safe, the primary focus of their long-term marketing efforts. What Volvo has done is position itself as the manufacturer of safe cars. This is the position they hold in the minds of the car buying public. As an advertiser this should be the focus of their campaigns. If they for some reason decide to change their approach, they stand to confuse and alienate their audience.

Whether you are dealing with website content or webmedia presentations the focus should be on establishing your primary marketing message in your audience's minds. If that singular message gets lost in a jungle of corporate platitudes and extraneous specifications then the chan

Transience

Transience refers to the fact that memory degrades over time, our recollections become generic and what we are left with is a sense of expectation rather than specific features.

If you overload your website visitors with a shopping list of features or a series of b-school banalities, you are giving up the opportunity to make a singular impression on your audience, especially if the features you are so proud of are mere duplicates of features offered by your competitors.

You may not remember the specifics of the latest Volvo automobile advertising campaign but you most likely regard Volvos to be safe, the primary focus of their long-term marketing efforts. What Volvo has done is position itself as the manufacturer of safe cars. This is the position they hold in the minds of the car buying public. As an advertiser this should be the focus of their campaigns. If they for some reason decide to change their approach, they stand to confuse and alienate their audience.

Whether you are dealing with website content or webmedia presentations the focus should be on establishing your primary marketing message in your audience's minds. If that singular message gets lost in a jungle of corporate platitudes and extraneous specifications then the chan

You may not remember the specifics of the latest Volvo automobile advertising campaign but you most likely regard Volvos to be safe, the primary focus of their long-term marketing efforts. What Volvo has done is position itself as the manufacturer of safe cars. This is the position they hold in the minds of the car buying public. As an advertiser this should be the focus of their campaigns. If they for some reason decide to change their approach, they stand to confuse and alienate their audience.

Whether you are dealing with website content or webmedia presentations the focus should be on establishing your primary marketing message in your audience's minds. If that singular message gets lost in a jungle of corporate platitudes and extraneous specifications then the chan

Whether you are dealing with website content or webmedia presentations the focus should be on establishing your primary marketing message in your audience's minds. If that singular message gets lost in a jungle of corporate platitudes and extraneous specifications then the chance of your audience retaining your message is greatly reduced.

To deal with this problem, we suggest clients think in terms of advertising campaigns rather than just an ad, and program-style linear narrative presentations rather than feature and specification-based information. In our own recent marketing campaign (http://www.mrpwebmedia/ads) we were able to present eighteen different issues, each in an individual presentation, but all with a central unifying theme. People may not remember the individual issues, but they will remember the central unifying theme of the campaign; most importantly they'll remember who we are and what we stand for.

Absent-mindedness

Absent-mindedness is the failure to pay attention when receiving information resulting in no memory, or the inability to recall information buried deep in memory because of missing contextual references.

The sheer volume of demand for attention and information that people deal with on a daily basis, what author and information architect, Saul Wurman refers to as "Information Anxiety," makes it impossible for people to absorb everything they think they should, or even want to, retain. Our brains automatically filter-out extraneous data and retain only what is important or relevant. As a result people are more likely to develop a general familiarity with a brand rather than an in-depth recollection of details.

Recognizing that your audience is only going to retain the core message you are delivering if it is relevant and meaningful requires that you give up the immaterial and concentrate on the essence of what you need to say.

You also must find ways to break through the mental barriers people erect in order to block-out useless content. A website dominated by large amounts of text requires a huge commitment of interest in ord