Rick Milenthal wrote an excellent article in the Oct 29 issue of Ad Age. He makes the point that consumers don’t think in terms of media, but rather in terms of what they want to experience. It is therefore our job to create messages that are right for the “media mode.” We don’t need to stop consumers from tuning us out. Instead, most consumers want to know and learn more, and be engaged. In short, they want us to tune them in.

The best nugget plucked from the article is this concept of modes. Milenthal mentions that there could be an endless amount of modes, but he limits his explanation to 6 primary classifications:

1. Entertainment
2. Information
3. Discovery
4. Connecting
5. Sharing
6. Expressing

The entertainment and information modes have been around for while; it’s those last four that have come to the fore with the continued expansion of development of the Internet. Using simple tools such as Flickr, mySpace, and Twitter, it is now extremely easy to connect, share and express ourselves.

And, because consumers are able to self-regulate their digestion of each of these modes, it is imperative for us as marketers to match our message with the mode. No one wants to be inundated with information they don’t need when they are in the entertainment mode. Nor do they want to be (necessarily) interrupted while in the discovery mode. It is our mission to align the message with the consumer’s mode. Doing so will help our messages make it into the consumer conscience, and keep us from wasting our client’s marketing budget.