Being Ignored Is the Biggest Risk

The law 'Being Ignored Is the Biggest Risk' posits that the single greatest source of waste in marketing is not 'inefficiency' or 'poor targeting,' but creative invisibility. In an attention-starved economy, advertising that fails to evoke an emotional response or break the consumer's perceptual filter is functionally non-existent. Research from the IPA and System1 demonstrates that 'neutral' or safe advertising—work that avoids controversy and adheres to category tropes—consistently underperforms bold, polarizing, or distinctive work. While marketers often fear 'alienating' potential buyers, the statistical reality is that the vast majority of advertising goes unnoticed. Therefore, the risk of being ignored far outweighs the risk of being disliked. Effectiveness is a direct byproduct of salience, and salience requires the bravery to be noticed in a sea of beige corporate messaging.

The formalization of this law stems from the longitudinal analysis of the IPA Databank, specifically the collaborative work of Peter Field and Les Binet, alongside the behavioral research of Orlando Wood and the System1 Group. In Wood’s seminal works, 'Look Out' (2019) and 'Lemon' (2019), he identifies a systemic decline in advertising effectiveness correlating with a shift toward 'left-brain' advertising—work that is literal, transactional, and devoid of the 'human' elements that capture broad-beam attention. System1’s database of over 100,000 ads reveals a staggering truth: approximately 50% of ads generate zero brand growth because they fail to elicit any emotional response. This research was further solidified by the work of Karen Nelson-Field on 'Attention Elasticity,' which proves that reach is a vanity metric if the creative fails to secure the initial 'mental entry' required for memory encoding. The consensus among these institutions is that 'creative waste' is the primary driver of poor ROI, and that waste is almost always caused by invisibility.

The mechanism behind this law is rooted in the neurobiology of attention and the economic principle of 'Attention Elasticity.' Human cognition is governed by a filter known as the Reticular Activating System (RAS), which prioritizes stimuli that are novel, emotionally charged, or personally relevant. Most 'safe' advertising utilizes category-standard imagery (e.g., a bank showing a happy couple, a car on a winding road), which the brain treats as 'background noise.' This results in 'inattentional blindness,' where the consumer physically sees the ad but the brain fails to process or store the information.

Mathematically, the 'Cost of Invisibility' can be expressed as an effective CPM (Cost Per Thousand). If a brand pays for 1,000 impressions but 90% of the audience ignores the creative because it is too neutral, the effective CPM is 10 times the nominal rate. Conversely, bold creative that secures attention acts as a 'media multiplier.' This is what Orlando Wood describes as the 'Look Out' effect—creative that uses 'right-brain' features like humor, character, and narrative to bypass the brain’s defensive filters.

Furthermore, there is a psychological threshold for memory encoding. Neutral advertising fails to reach the 'Arousal' threshold required to trigger the hippocampus. Without this trigger, the brand cannot build 'Mental Availability.' The risk of 'alienation'—the fear that a bold ad might turn people off—is statistically insignificant compared to the 'risk of the void.' Because consumers are repertoire buyers (buying from a set of brands), being noticed and disliked by 10% of the population while being loved/remembered by 30% is a vastly superior outcome to being 'ignored' by 100%. Boldness creates a 'marmite effect' that ensures the brand occupies a distinct node in the consumer’s memory structure, whereas safety ensures the brand remains a commodity.