In today’s fragmented media landscape, where our digital diets are leading to information obesity, advertisers face a conundrum in how best to connect with audiences. With more content being thrust at us than ever, how can campaigns cut through the noise? 

Frequency has long been debated by the advertising industry. In a world with so many different media touchpoints, is there still a magic number of messages before audiences become customers? The gap between an ad being noticed at all, to audiences feeling bombarded, is small. Now, as well as a killer creative idea, a savvy media plan to match is an art form. 

At a time when audiences are fatigued by a tidal wave of content, drowning in the doom scroll, how can brands deliver messages with impact? If a creative idea resonates, it will stick with an audience no matter the scarcity. 

In the complex landscape we asked industry experts; do brands need to switch gears from volume to ensuring the value of marketing messages targeting overwhelmed consumers?

In an era when consumers are bombarded with messages from every direction, it’s surprising how many brands still haven’t learned the art of restraint. Rather than dialling back and communicating with intention, they continue to push harder - more emails, more texts, more targeted ads. It’s exhausting. No wonder people are tuning out.

Marketing should be a considered conversation, not just incessant chatter. Think of it like dating, nothing kills interest faster than a flood of ‘just checking in’ messages after one mediocre interaction. On the other hand, someone who knows when to show up (and has something interesting to say when they do) stands out.

As we move further into 2025, it’s time for brands to rethink their approach. Value beats volume, and consumers crave messages that are considered and contextually relevant. Rather than flooding inboxes with random news and promotions, the focus should be on content that informs, entertains, and ideally solves a problem. This, in turn, builds loyalty and positions the brand as a helpful presence as opposed to an annoying interruption.

Brands that will succeed won’t try too hard. They’ll connect at the right time, in the right place, with the right messages. They’ll let their values speak. In an increasingly crowded world, the real advantage goes to brands that know how to ‘play it cool’.

100%. Yes, they do.

We’re living in an attention economy. We’re overwhelmed by content from all angles; overstimulated and exhausted by brands constantly shouting for space. Volume just adds noise. What actually cuts through is value. Relevance. Resonance. Connection.

At Valentine, we work in challenging sectors where attention is harder to earn, and trust matters even more. We’ve learned that overwhelmed consumers don’t need more messages. They need the right ones.

Messages that not only meet a need and solve a problem, but most importantly, stir a feeling. Messages that land at the right time and understand emotional context. That show up not just to sell, but to matter.

The brands winning right now aren’t the ones shouting loudest. They’re the ones who’ve taken the time to understand their audience intimately and built a genuine connection and real chemistry. Because connection isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s the thing that shifts behaviour; it’s the only thing that builds lasting trust.

So yes, brands need to switch gears. It’s not about saying more. It’s about connecting more. Being felt, not just seen.

Volume’s cheap. Chemistry isn’t.

Brands need to start behaving less like broadcasters and more like trusted contributors to culture. Winning isn’t more impressions; it’s making an impression. Brands should be brave enough to speak less and say more. It’s an easy trap to fall into given the vast audiences that can be reached through one of the many platforms, but it’s like the idiom of ‘if you haven’t got anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all’. I’m not saying you have to be nice (although it helps), but don’t just say things for the sake of it. 

It also doesn’t mean you can’t be interesting in your volume output. For our client Nissan Formula E Team we employ a strategy which purposely creates quick, PR-led, (usually) social activations that sit in culture and drive huge engagement. Campaigns include creating a fashion label, an energy drink, a perfume and this week a retro 8-bit video game to celebrate the Japanese E-prix it’s already been played by 25,000 people, spending more than 400 hours hours playing it. 

Already by far one of best performing campaigns, my sincere apologies to any employers that have seen a decrease in productivity during that time. 

Yes!

There’s a high price for high-volume marketing. The numbers tell a sobering story. Accenture Interactive data shows 69% of consumers feel overwhelmed by the frequency of marketing they receive; 47% of internet users now use ad blockers; and just 4% of digital display ads receive more than one second of active attention. 

This shows that we've created a marketing ecosystem where consumers are actively developing tools and strategies to escape our messaging barrage. When your audience is investing in ways to avoid you, perhaps it's time to reconsider your approach?

Turns out, marketing is the rare discipline where doing less actually delivers more. Brands need to create less noise and more value. 

Three principles to do marketing by:

1. Who cares? (If your message isn't useful or genuinely interesting, don't send it.)
2. Timing matters. (Deliver messages when contextually relevant, not just when your campaign calendar says it's time.
3. Measure better. (Replace "how many people did we reach?" with "did anyone actually care?”)

I would love to simply answer yes, because I believe this should always be true. However, the reality is it’s not about a blanket ‘switching of gears’, as the answer is so often sector, audience, and buyer cycle/seasonality specific. Selling software across a three-year period is very different from selling fitness plan memberships in January.

It’s about knowing which gear to use - and then building the right mix and cadence to suit the strategy you’ve defined.

Brands certainly need to move beyond a default obsession with ‘more’ - especially given the saturation of every channel and consumers’ growing propensity to unsubscribe. We should be optimising for meaning at every opportunity. And the age-old (extensively repeated) truth still holds: effectiveness comes from messages that are distinctive, emotionally resonant, and consistently delivered, not just from pushing volume for volume’s sake.

Equally, the idea of ‘compound creativity’ - the consistency and repeatability of value-driven assets over time, and the proven effects of this - is crucial to remember.

The best marketing understands that value and volume aren’t mutually exclusive, but value must always lead. We still see far too much content that feels like filler - produced simply to maintain visibility, rather than drive relevance. That’s especially problematic in categories where trust and long-term memory matter.

That said, in certain sectors - fast-moving DTC brands, for example - there’s a place for high-frequency, reactive, even viral content. But even then, the most successful brands have a point of view, a tone, and a recognisable core. Volume still works best when it’s structured around a clear idea.

There’s a good analogy floating around about the modern marketing mix being less like a funnel and more like a pinball machine - a chaotic, multi-touch system where attention bounces quickly and unpredictably. But even within this, the strategic opportunities to ensure marketing is value-led, in my eyes, are significant.

In short: don’t sacrifice quality for quantity. Visibility is easy - value is earned. But also recognise that sometimes, at the right moment in your buyer cycle, it’s entirely right to remind customers you exist five times in a week.

The more relevant situations you can show up in, the better - ideally with consistency and value baked in.

Value beats volume. Always has.

Only today, the cost of overwhelming, annoying or boring has never been higher. Open your phone and you can block a brand in a second. Swipe past a message mid-sentence. And oh -who’s that at the door? The bar for attention is pretty low, too. And if your fingers don’t do the blocking, the algorithm will.

Some recent research from Peloton found that 70% of shoppers have unsubscribed from at least 3 brands in the past 3 months just because of message overload. And then 57% had switched brands for the same reason. So no, ‘more’ isn’t the answer. Not when budgets are tighter and targets are tougher.

Yet, while the environment has never been more unforgiving, it’s also never been more exciting. More full of possibility. And creative opportunity.

With the tools we’ve got now, we can be hyper-targeted to a ridiculous degree. We can make our creative relevant, useful, interesting and entertaining to very specific audiences in very specific moments. 

Peloton knew they were one of the key offenders with constant emails, year-round TV advertising and ongoing ‘flash sales’, audiences were tuning out. So they’ve moved over to higher-value campaigns so they’re customers aren’t drowning in marketing clutter. 

So, yeah, value over volume. Because if you’re not adding value, you’re getting swiped mid-sentence.

We’re in the middle of a content obesity crisis. Bombarded by thousands of messages all day, every day. And I don’t know about you, but my ‘scan filter’ is pretty ruthless these days. Anything remotely non-essential discarded. The odd irrelevant message? Forgiven and ignored. No big deal. But do it consistently, and you’re not just wasting budget, you’re doing damage. At best, you’ll be blocked. Worse, negativity builds.

So, what piques interest? Relevance! A message that actually means something. Want a place in my overcrowded mind? Make my life better! Solve a problem, tell a genuinely interesting story, or entertain me without the hard sell.

AI was meant to help. But it’s often just used to churn out more noise. Volume isn’t strategy. The real opportunity is in using AI to think better, not just make faster. As a creative partner. Helping marketers sharpen the idea, not just multiply the assets.

Messaging has to be smarter. More signal, less noise. Fewer messages, better crafted. Because when everyone’s constantly yelling from all angles for attention, it’s the brand that whispers something meaningful that stands out.

Let’s face it, attention isn’t really bought anymore. It’s earned! Through timing, empathy and a sprinkle of creative courage.

The short answer is messages, yes but assets no.

We operate in a low attention economy where consumers (who are usually not in the market) are hit with tens of (if not hundreds of) advertising messages a day. Dr Grace Kite hits the nail on the head when she says it’s about “lots of littles” when it comes to brands getting in front of consumers, and I’d agree. But, when it comes to messaging in this low attention world, we need to keep banging the same drum. Focus on the one thing consumers have to know. It’s a quality game, not a quantity one. 

So, yes. Let's switch from volume to value when it comes to our actual message (and creative) but we can't detach ourselves from the reality of media proliferation and the need to be seen often and everywhere.

When you have nothing of value to say, the only way to be heard is to say it more often and in more places than anyone else. For market-leading brands with market-leading media budgets, this might work - but for the rest of us, there's surely a better way to achieve impact than try 'outshout' the competition.

 Instead, we should put our trust in great ideas. Ideas that are magnetic in nature, pulling people towards them. Ideas that earn attention, cutting through noise. Ideas that live on in our minds - and our feeds - beyond their paid media allocation. These ideas rely on their magnetism, not 'volume' to have impact.

So yes, in today's landscape, our ideas tend to need to be expressed in more places & spaces than ever before, and  the amount of content being consumed by people does make it even harder to be seen & heard - but that doesn't mean that the only way to compete is to pump out more digital litter and  hope some of it sticks. 

A little volume, a little more magic might have the same effect, and at half the price.

It depends.

If you think about the mere-exposure effect - a psychological phenomenon where repeated exposure to something increases our liking for it - this suggests that the volume of marketing messages does matter. Higher frequency = better results. 

And if we shift our perspective to the overcrowded world of social media, to an extent, this is true. Brands do need a certain level of frequency to be remembered. But, in a space where consumers are exposed to dozens of ads during a single scrolling session, is more exposure really the only answer? And can content truly stand out solely by prioritising quantity over quality as a strategy?

Now more than ever, consumers on social media no longer want to be sold to. Instead, they crave content that makes them feel represented, and they won’t think twice to boycott brands that stand for the wrong values. The traditional approach to social media content no longer works, and frequency alone doesn’t guarantee better results, especially if you’re not investing the same level of strategic thought into the quality and relevance of your content.

In today’s social landscape, brands aiming to build genuine, lasting bonds with their audience must bridge the gap between representation and connection in their advertising to stand out from the crowd, demonstrate a true understanding of their audience and achieve not only awareness, but most importantly, relevance. 

Considering all this, I can’t help but think: while volume and frequency surely play an important role in achieving higher awareness, that alone is not sufficient to cut through the noise and be remembered. On social, the heart of a brand’s marketing messages should be centered above all else around a deep understanding of the audience and the content they crave.

Quality > quantity.

Everything is an ad now. In Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman talks about the exposure effect, how the mere exposure to something (a brand, a product, a message) breeds trust and likeability. And while this might signal the need for volume above all else, it’s counterbalanced by people’s increasing distrust of brands, and the sheer overwhelm of existing in 2025. Customers need volume of exposure, but also value. It’s not a one-or-the-other equation. 

For volume, brands need to build scale in layers across audiences and channels - whether digital, social, or offline, reaching customers on multiple platforms drives higher ROI. Showing up consistently in ways that not only build memory structures, but build surround sound - the feeling that ‘I’m seeing this everywhere’. But within each channel, it’s about quality, not creating the same, cut-and-paste ad, regurgitated repeatedly. It’s about having a consistent, cohesive brand world that flexes for the environment, whether that’s a creator on TikTok, a billboard, or a YouTube bumper. 

We know that scale is fundamental for brand growth, reaching all potential buyers within your category. But the environment we’re living in means attention is fragmented. Brand building needs layers, not a one-size-fits-all approach. And that isn’t a binary choice between volume and quality; it’s about doing both.