I recently wrote an article for Relevance that will hopefully put target marketing into perspective. Check out the whole article here.
When people buy goldfish as pets, they probably aren’t expecting to develop deep, emotional connections with these animals. Goldfish aren’t capable of showing affection, you can’t teach them how to fetch the morning paper, and everyone knows they have extremely short attention spans.
All you can really do with a goldfish is feed it, watch it swim around in circles, and wonder what — if anything — is going on inside its head.
It might surprise you to hear this, but a study recently indicated that humans have shorter attention spans than goldfish. Perhaps, like me, you chuckled upon learning this factoid — but as a marketer, you’ll quickly realize this is no laughing matter.