Is Visibility a Guarantee of Success? The Effectiveness of Marketing in the Urban Space

Abstract

This article addresses the question of whether the visibility of specific brands in large cities always supports the economic success of the firms to which they belong. The author discusses the issue—which borders on sociology, psychology, and practical wisdom about marketing activities—in the light of four theoretical concepts. The first is George Frank’s idea of the ‘economy of attention’, wherein attention is a good, which, contrary to other economic resources, does not have a substitute and is very hard to replace with anything else. The second concerns the type of audience reached by the visual marketing messages presented in cities. The third perspective is related to the concept of the ‘culture of distraction’, whose characteristic trait is the problem that individuals have in concentrating their attention on one object for a longer period of time. The fourth plane on which answers are sought is how the issue of visibility is overlooked in marketing campaigns. The key idea for this part of the analysis is Henry Jenkins’ spreadability’. In conclusion, the author ponders the case of an ad campaign appealing to a sense other than that of sight. In this regard the author refers to the osmosociological perspective described by Marek S. Szczepański and Weronika Ślęzak-Tazbir, among others.