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.
Share this post:
Being someone with ADD, I barely got through your article on information overload. :)
Seriously though, information is consumed when it is wanted. That is why we can have illiterates in an age of instant access to information.
Information overload is when I am forced to take on more than I want, like when I am stuck with a bore at a party talking about how he reconstructed his Atari computers into a home based network! Ugh! :)
Hey Bob,
Good anecdote for you:
Alan Moore, at the event last night, talked about his four-year-old son who announced he could spell L-O-A-D-I-N-G. Great, he said, and the boy spelled the letters out correctly. Alan was very chuffed for a moment.
But then the boy wanted to know what the three dots meant.
If I were his father, I’d say, “Great Attention Span!“
:)
We have here in China even bigger problems!
I teach in China and our Business School students have just launched an ambitious new Web 2.0 concept, called “the Krem Trekker Diaries”. It has really triggered a craze back here.
It’s an interactive adventure published twice a week. The readers give advice to the principal characters and influence the story by voting. Then the story is published in English.
The venture has so far been a non-commercial and the ultimate goal has been to give the students a — so far unheard — global voice. However, now as there are thousands of daily visitors the intiators start to realize that they may have a really powerful interactive channel. By voting the readers give information (in a country where consumer surveys are forbidden) and at the same time they can be fed with product placement or with whatever commercial messages (the hero don’t drive a car — he drives a Buick)!
The English pages (with the access to the Chinese ones) are at: http://www.kremtrekker.com
Mauri G Gronroos
Associate Professor
of Knowledge Management
and Intellectual Property Rights
361021 Xiamen, P.R.China