An advert for everyone at once

Scroll past enough small shop adverts in Jeddah and a pattern appears: the video that tries to speak to everyone in the same fifteen seconds. The teenager and the grandmother. The bargain and the luxury. Fast cuts for the young, a calm voice for the old, a discount and a promise of quality in the same frame.

It seems sensible. Why choose half the market when you could have all of it? Surely a little of each will reach more people than all of one.

It rarely works that way. Blend two clear messages and you get something that is fully neither. The teenager sees an advert for her parents. The grandmother sees noise. The shopper hunting for a deal cannot find the price, and the one who wants something special is put off by the discount banner.

The advert that works is the one that is entirely itself. It picks one person with one problem and becomes the best possible answer for that person. Everyone else keeps scrolling, and that is the price of being clear.

This holds well beyond adverts. A shop, a product or a brand trying to stand in two places at once usually ends up standing in neither. There is a market for one specific thing, and another market for a different specific thing. There is seldom a market for the mixture.

When people have more choice than they can ever look through, the precise offer for someone in particular tends to beat the vague offer for anyone at all.