The Attention Conundrum

By Remi Couzelas, Head of Strategic Planning at 303 MullenLowe

I was finally getting my head around the ‘experience economy’ to only realise that yet again I was late to the party and that everybody had already moved on to the ‘attention economy’.

The ‘Attention economy’ is when human attention is treated as a scarce commodity. And of course, in our line of work this is problematic – after all, everything we do is about securing one’s interest in favour of Brand X, and we do this by capturing people’s attention. In other words, attention is the start of advertising effectiveness because without people’s attention we can’t persuade people to buy, visit, vote or do.

Now, thanks to professor and consultant Thales S. Teixeira we can no longer blame everything on “The Internet”, he identified that attention with regard to advertising was already decreasing even in years when the Internet was still in its infancy and the number of TV channels was still relatively limited.

So, if not the Internet…then what? According to experts, advertising is looking at four key challenges in order to regain people’s interest and therefore their attention. While these issues are real, I would argue that these challenges in fact are not resulting in an attention problem.

1.    Consumers are exposed to too many ads and brands. Are they? According to the Harvard Business School people complained about an excessive number of ads as early as 1759!

2.    Proliferation of channels. While it might play a role, we are yet to see (I believe) the correlation between the number of media channels and decreasing levels of attention.

3.    The decline in advertising trust. Research by Nielsen, Edelman and Kantar has shown that trust in TV advertising has remained relatively constant for a very long time. 

4.    The option to avoid advertising. Another obstacle but certainly nothing that can explain people’s decreasing level of attention.

If we talk about attention, we have to talk about Microsoft. According to their research findings in 2015, since the year 2000 (or about when the mobile revolution began) the average attention span dropped from twelve seconds to eight seconds. We humans, it was claimed, had a lower attention span than goldfish. This (sexy) soundbite was reported by many, including some very serious media outlets like Time Magazine.

Even without a PHD in computer science but with just a little common sense, it is quite easy to debunk the goldfish theory:

1.    Gaming culture has never been as popular around the world as it is now (already true pre COVID-19) and it demands a fair bit of focus and engagement.

2.    Blockbuster movies keep getting longer (1950’s Cinderella was 1h16 mins, Toy Story 4 is 1h 48mins in length, the eight (I know, how is this even possible?) Fast & the Furious movies average 120 minutes and they are getting longer, the last four are almost half an hour longer than the initial four.

3.    The rise of the streaming platforms prompted us to come up with a new saying: ‘binge watching’… we are literally glued to a screen for hours on end.

4.    Quibi, the short form streaming platform made for mobile (more than $1.5 billion of investment) shut down almost 6 months after going live. 

The real point is that we are not short on attention, but we may have forgotten that attention is earned not given and that consumers (dare to say people) are not brainless, distracted idiots with less or more attention to give. As a general rule people tend to pay attention to those who pay attention to them. But when was the last time, we started a project by asking ‘is it interesting and worth people’s attention?’.

For me it starts with the belief that in an ‘attention economy’, with so much content available to us, creativity is still a competitive advantage and the only way to keep persuading people.

Understanding why and how advertising can capture someone’s attention is complicated but we can extrapolate a few rules in order to make a brand as successful as possible.

Entertain.

Great advertising is an opportunity for a brand to simply entertain without the pressure of a ‘hard-sell’. The great Bill Bernbach used to talk about a softer-sell approach, often sprinkled with humour, all in the pursuit of creating desire and spending that little bit more time with people by being pleasantly entertaining. 

Budget Direct’s work in Captain Risky and the latest campaign Sarge, is a wonderful example of work that entertain’s but it’s also been the platform from which the brand has become the fastest growing general insurer in Australia!

Rethink inform.

Historically, advertising used to be about informing. According to Thales S. Teixeira, when the commercial Internet exploded with websites, it disrupted one of the main reasons consumers were watching advertising: to seek information in order to make the right decision. In a world of information overload and information-rich platforms the need for advertising to primarily inform, has changed, brands need to develop an emotional advantage.

Quality over quantity

Despite the increasing number of channels, a lot can be learned from the John Lewis, Teslas and Red Bulls of the world. I’d argue that for them, the main game is not about being stretched across as many channels as possible but delivering quality advertising content on quality channels. They’ve embraced the attention getting phenomena of the truly spectacular event. No need to jump from space, launch a spacecraft or create a Disney like fairy tale 10 times a year. For these brands the game is about being interesting and entertaining in a big way once or twice every year.

Unfair share of attention at the moments that matter

The truth is, creative ideas have always been more effective when seamlessly connected across touch points, presented to the right prospect, in the right channel, at the optimum time. You should think very carefully about when you are interrupting your prospect, will they be in a mindset to listen?

Brand content is not a cheaper way to do TV

It is called ‘brand content’ not product or service content for a reason. Brand content needs to be perceived as an opportunity to develop a more interactive and engaging approach to marketing, one that still serves the long-term ambition of the brand, but one that is centred around more complex and lengthy stories that are not living in the hurried world of a call to action. 

When we started working on the documentary Machine with Audi, we knew that if we wanted to reclaim ‘technology’ and compete with the likes of Uber, Tesla/Elon Musk we would need to be part of the cultural conversation and a captivating film on AI could be the way to achieve this on a global scale.

Be clear on your brand assets

When everything else fails, brands should always be able to fall back on distinctive and powerful brand assets to capture attention. But we tend to forget that these assets are built over time, need consistency and are not intuitive knowledge, they need to be taught to consumers. We often get tired of them a lot sooner than our customers do and make changes way too fast.

Beyond the world of advertising: Art 

If attention is the new currency in a media-based society, the amount of attention towards an art piece could therefore be directly linked to its monetary value. And to prove this, Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau created ‘The Value of Art’ project. 

‘The Value of Art’ is a series of interactive paintings equipped with sensors, these paintings are placed in museums and the sensors are here to capture the number of people who have stopped/looked at the painting and the amount of time they spent looking at the painting.

At the end of each exhibition ‘The Value of Art’ paintings will have reached a certain monetary value. The artwork could now be sold for exactly that value or sent on to the next exhibition to increase its value even further. The more people look at the work, the more valuable it will become.

It is as if we were to auction and put a price on our own attention. And this is why attention is our most valuable asset, because anything we look at with intention is taking possession of our mind.