Craving Attention?
The likelihood is that - in this day and age - your attention is stretched fairly thin. The law of information states that, “the rapid growth of information causes scarcity of attention”. Few would deny that there’s been an explosive growth of information over the last few years. It’s estimated that the average consumer is exposed to around 8000 marketing messages a day.
What some people are saying as a consequence, is that since it is their attention, and not information that is a scarcity, then that attention is worth cold, hard cash. You want some time to talk to me about your new product or service? Fine, you can pay me to listen.
The mechanism for this to happen remains unclear, but one idea proposed is that we start collecting our own attention data. We might then sell or lease this information to marketers and thus they’d be able to target us with relevant information.
Not everyone is entirely thrilled about this plan. If you were a media producer, for example, used to selling an inventory of eight million page views for traditional banners, then this attention malarkey is something you’d rather just went away. You might also be rather concerned about whether this sort of approach can work. A lot of brands are looking for a relationship with customers. If they’ve obtained that with money, how much real attention are you actually likely to get?
A tangled web indeed. So that’s why we at NMK have organised tomorrow’s Beers and Innovation event, The Attention Seekers. George Nimeh, is the chair and we’ve got some clever panellists: Chris Seth, MD of Piczo; Sam Sethi of Vecosys; and Alan Moore, co-author of ‘Communities Dominate Brands’.
If you’re in town, do sign up and come out for a subtle mix of intellectual stimulation and alcoholic tranquillisation.
