We are inundated with marketing messages, so much so that for the most part they don’t work. In order for a television commercial to get the intended result, they have to be repeated, over and over, until they are lodged in the audience’s brain. In the era of 12 TV channels, you could do that. There wasn’t that much on, so it would only take buying on a few networks before you would reach that level of saturation.

Today, there are too many choices, too many things competing for our attention. The thing that still works, and has worked since people gathered around the campfire, is a good story.

One of those great marketing stories is the one about the guy who lost 245 pounds eating Subway subs. It’s hard to believe that story has been working for Subway for the past 10 years. Here’s the story from this morning’s National Post.