CBS Sunday Morning had a great cover story this morning that seemed to effectively encapsulate the state of the advertising business today. “Cutting Through Advertising Clutter”touches upon the “usual suspect” topics of the death of the TV industrial complex, the expansion of new media including experiential marketing, and the growth of digital product/ad placements in everything from baseball and video games to urinals. (Yup. There’s a company called Wizmark that focuses on interactive urinal communicators.) All are presented as the cure to the TiVo ad-killing problem.

However, beyond being just the usual old-school slamming, TiVo-embracing diatribe on the current state of the ad game, this insightful segment makes an even more relevant point. Regardless of what media you utilize for your campaign, you have to try even harder to cut through the clutter in media today. The real challenge is finding new ways to reach the customer with your message that is memorable and entertaining and doesn’t get caught in the spam filter with the rest of the things that look like “advertising.”

I think the segment’s quote from the president of the marketing firm Yankelovich, Jay Walker-Smith, sums it up best: “Consumers don’t hate advertising. What they hate is bad advertising.”

The Point? Great article. Worth your time. Read it and think of a new way you could be reaching your customers with a clutter-cutting message. In the end, the source of this story wasn’t so surprising given that this is the network that boldly embraced promoting their fall season on eggs (we have yet to see if it’s good-bold or bad-bold).