• by David Kaplan , April 20, 2005

More than half of consumers consider themselves someone who actively tries to resist advertising, while nearly three quarters say they are interested in products that will help them skip or opt out of being exposed to marketing messages, a Yankelovich survey released this week says.

While a similar study conducted by the marketing research firm found a full 60 percent actively avoided advertising messages, compared to 54 percent this year, J. Walker Smith, Yankelovich's president, said that the negative attitudes about marketing techniques are still overwhelmingly negative. For example, 56 percent say that they shun products that make them feel flooded with marketing and advertising. In the 2004 Yankelovich study, 54 percent agreed.

And in what seems like a particularly odd paradox, while the majority of consumers surveyed by the Chapel Hill, NC-based consultancy expressed attitudes of resistance, 55 percent also agree that they "enjoy advertising," which is roughly equivalent to the 47 percent who agreed in the 2004 Yankelovich research.

To Smith, there is no disconnect in the survey results. Rather, it reflects consumers' natural ambivalence toward marketing, as well as - and perhaps, more important, he said - the fact that marketers are not meeting consumers' needs as well as they could.

"Consumers are anxious to be engaged by marketers in a more satisfying and compelling way," Smith said. "Marketing resistance is not a desire to stop shopping altogether. Consumers just want a better way to interact with marketers. Smarter, technologically empowered, time-starved consumers want marketing that shows more respect for their time and attention. Consumers don't feel that the current practice of marketing fulfills this requirement."

The challenge for marketers therefore is to find a way to engage these positive feelings about marketing, Smith said, but current marketing practices are more likely to engender resistance, and this seems to have changed little in the past year despite big, highly publicized efforts by several major marketers to improve the nature of their interactions with consumers.

Perhaps more time is needed, Smith allowed, but more far-reaching improvements are needed as well.

For the current moment, however, the report advises marketers to use the kinds of practices that fully recognize consumers' ability to resist ads, while offering some sort of incentive - or "reciprocity," as Smith said - that makes them feel that accepting a marketers' message isn't a waste of their time.

According to the study, 55 percent say they "would be willing to pay a little extra to get only the kinds of marketing and advertising that [they] prefer to hear and see."

"The depth of the dislike for current marketing practices seen in this and other Yankelovich research is unsurprising because consumers have a lot of passion and affection for marketing and advertising," Smith said. "Consumers like marketing so much that they are especially critical when they feel that marketing fails to measure up. Resistance should not be met with surreptitiousness or aggressiveness. Rather, it should be embraced and nurtured."