May We Have Your Attention?

Dear Reader: this is both a long statement and an open question about the current and future state of advertising/video marketing and content creation. My effort by the end of this little piece is to hear more from all of you on these topics in hopes of expanding my perspective, but there are exit doors at the front and the rear of this bus. Depart at anytime. Leave with no love lost.

Over the last month or so, I’ve been really struck by the preciousness of attention. Given that we’re in the media fire tunnel of campaign season, this is probably no coincidence. If you’re in this business (the marketing/communication/advertising/content creation business) we wake up everyday, whether we realize it or not, with an almost singular directive; get people’s attention. That’s what we do. We write, design, evaluate, create, produce, test, inspire and exhibit to gain people’s attention. I’m doing it write now (pun intended). Could we be and should we be more honest about these transactions for attention?

We’re all storytellers. We’re all creative. We’re all collaborators. But at the end of the day we’re really attention seekers. We have a constant challenge with constantly growing exhibition points (TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, Vimeo, blah blah). We’re crafting and fighting for eyetime and eartime and it is an ever widening marketplace. The currency we’re chasing for ourselves, our clients and our audiences is the now highly monetized, highly competitive market of and for Attention. I think this goes beyond advertising/marketing/communications rhythms of the past because of the contemporary paradigm that “if you’re not buying the product, you are the product”. Likes and Dislikes and Shares and Trending – these are all the marks of how much attention we’ve won or lost. They’re not sales figures or data on revenue.

Attention has never been more precious with respect to respecting it. We only have so much attention to devote to our families, friends, community, problems of the world, problems in our neighborhoods, etc. in a given day – particularly when we are so accessible from the attention seekers. So, when we build videos, podcasts, memes, etc. it feels like we as creators need to stop down periodically to appreciate our audiences and their limited and precious attention. Can we say more with less? Should we be more honest through our mediums about the fact that we are actively seeking attention i.e. don’t shy away from the transaction. I look forward to thoughts on this or anything adjacent to this topic.

If you’re still with me here, thank you for your attention.