Marketing Lessons Learned from Saturday Morning Cartoons

For the past few months I’ve been thinking about writing a series of posts on the effect of marketing/advertising’s on our society. At the most basic level, much of the inspiration for my designs come from studying how people interact with the world around them, whether that be how they scroll a page on a web site, flip open a brochure, or look at signage in the mall. For that reason, I’m starting this series; we’ll see how many articles we can come up with. The first installment: Saturday Morning Cartoons.

I try to make it a habit to go to the gym on Saturday mornings. It’s not quite as habitual as I’d like it to be, but I’m working on that. A few weeks ago, I headed for the treadmill with the goal of doing 30 minutes of intense cardio. In my gym there are 15-20 TV’s in the cardio area. I was looking for the best treadmill in front of something that would keep my mind far away from the pain. I jumped on in front of Law and Order. I knew that the interesting storyline and the twisting plot would keep me entertained. The only problem was I didn’t have any headphones and the TV’s don’t have closed captioning.

What I thought was the best location for my run soon proved to be rather disappointing. Without audio or closed caption I was lost. I couldn’t tell if that was the good guy or the bad guy in the interrogation room. I soon lost interest, but what did get my interest, you guessed it, the cartoons. I don’t know the name of the show, yet even still today I distinctly remember the story line, without audio or closed caption mind you. I watched as the hero daughter of the show worked to save her father from his own stupidity. But I can’t tell you a single detail from Law and Order.

The Point

It’s the simplest messages that often leave the strongest impression on us. We often get approached by businesses that have a super complex message that they want to cram into a 1″x2″ newspaper ad or worse yet, there logo. But let this little observation show you that simplicity is the key to getting your target market to remember you. Short, Clear, Simple, Concise – the recipe to success.

–Re-posted from Crashbox Creative. For a couple years I had the privilege to work with my friend Jonathan Briehl at Crashbox Creative. This is one of the posts written for his blog re-posted here for posterity’s sake —