You see somewhere between 4,000 and 10,000 ads a day. That's not a knock on advertising; it's just how much noise a person filters through before breakfast. So your brain does what it has to: tunes out the noise and defaults to familiar routines, even when those routines are inefficient, annoying, or slow.
Marketers aren’t fighting for attention. They’re fighting autopilot.
People aren't short on options. They’re just numb to the friction. Most of us tolerate bad software, clunky processes, and overpriced subscriptions until someone points it out and makes it impossible to un-see. That's the opening. Brands that plant a virus of doubt into their story, on purpose, are the ones people actually act on.
Make People Uncomfortable First
Good storytelling doesn't open with your product or service. It opens with the audience's blind spot.
- Smart thermostats: They didn't just sell a sleek dial. They ran ads showing people how much money the old dial was burning every winter.
- Fintech startups: They didn't just pitch an app. They put a number on the hidden fees your bank was charging you the whole time.
- Meal kits: They didn't just sell convenience. They pointed at the wasted groceries rotting in your fridge from the last 3 "healthy eating" attempts.
Same move, every time: point at something the customer stopped noticing, and let them feel a little annoyed about it. That annoyance is the whole game. Once someone starts questioning "the way I've always done this," habituation cracks, and they go looking for a fix. Ideally yours.
Turning Doubt into Action
How do we do it? Three things matter most here:
- Find the friction. Use first-party behavioral data to spot exactly where users hit a wall, then message that specific pain point. Skip "our product is great." Say: "You spent 4 minutes doing something that should take 10 seconds."
- Keep the story going. Email, push, and SMS shouldn't just push discounts. Every touchpoint is a chance to remind someone how their old approach costs them.
- Make it personal. Zero-party data turns a broad brand narrative into a 1:1 conversation. Doubt lands harder when it's about their specific habit, not a generic pain point.
Do this well and your product stops looking like a nice-to-have. It becomes the obvious fix to a problem the customer just noticed.
This article was originally published on Publicis CRMOne's LinkedIn page. Follow here.
