If an example comes to mind easily, we assume it is common or likely.
More quotesPaid, earned and owned media all contain waste when inspected separately.
The ad reaches people who will never buy. The event includes conversations nobody can attribute. The broad campaign repeats a message to someone who already saw it. An efficiency zealot circles each imperfection until the plan has the immaculate scale of a family picnic.
Fame is redundant. People encounter an idea in different places, at inconvenient times and with wildly unequal attention. Repetition across contexts helps the memory survive. Removing every overlap may improve the ratio while destroying the effect.
Attribution prefers a clean cause. Memory rarely supplies one. The second encounter may work because the first made the name familiar; the third may make an earlier claim credible. Asking which exposure “caused” the response can be like asking which bite caused lunch.
That hardly licenses throwing cash at mediocre work. Excess distribution cannot rescue a message people neither notice nor care about. Constraints are real. The argument is about optimisation targets: cheap exposure, or enough presence to change availability?
Some moments punish underspending permanently. A category forms, competitors establish the language and the cautious entrant arrives later with a very efficient explanation of why it also exists. Other activity is routine and deserves ruthless trimming. Treating both alike is managerial neatness masquerading as strategy.
Before cutting apparent duplication, ask which failure it prevents. Does another channel add credibility, reach a different context or cover uncertainty in the first? Then judge the combined outcome rather than awarding medals to the cheapest component.
The final media plan has three routes to the audience. Finance calls that overlap.
Six months later, customers call the brand familiar. No report can identify the single exposure responsible, which is rather the point.