Building up a marketing resistance?

An article appearing yesterday in destinationCRM.com (CRM, by the way, stands for Customer Relationship Management), discusses the marketing burnout that many customers are feeling as they are inudated with ads from both traditional and new media. The article entitled, "Consumers Still Resist Marketing Attempts," struck a chord with me since I regularly find myself wondering if students are really reading the flyers, posters, e-mails and web pages we create to advertise our services, or if they're tuning it all out.

The article points out that it's not that customers resist all advertising, but that they would like advertising that they can control. They want marketing that is short and to the point, that they can view when it is convenient for them, and they also like to hear about products and services directly from friends and or other people they trust.

I think this has some interesting implications for libraries. Concise directed marketing, making good use of word-of-mouth advertising through building personal relationships, and resisting the tempation to bombard students with information might go a long way toward getting our messages across. Have any examples to share?