Overcoming Attention Spam with Relevance

As I started this sentence, the phone rang. Then an email came in. Then another. Then a text. Each interruption required some kind of a response on my part. Now I’m back to writing – 20 minutes later.

All this is indicative of the increasing demands being placed on our brains. I call it, “attention spam.”

Some of it is important and relevant. Work has to get done, and families need to communicate, sometimes at a moment’s notice. But that is a very, very small percentage. The rest is mental litter. Useless, irrelevant noise.

Some marketers think their primary goal is to get my attention. So they do it in 72-point bold type, or with loud music, or provocative images. They assault my eyes or my ears or my intelligence so I will take notice. There’s one commercial I saw recently that had some insane cartoon repeating the same insane chorus of a song and the words on screen proclaimed, “Now try to get that out of your head.” Yes, I remember it. I have no idea what they were selling. And if I did, I’d avoid it like a public toilet seat.

Even when I am momentarily interested in seeing something like a news clip or a YouTube video, I have to sit through a 30-second ad first. By that time, the moment’s gone. Don’t they realize I look away and do something else until the video I wanted starts? Don’t they realize I can put an ad filter on this and not see any of it? And why don’t they realize a 3-second ad can be much more powerful.

It is easy to get the public’s attention today. It is far more difficult to earn it. To brand a product, service or entity in a way that earns the reaction you want from that attention. To get people to go out of their way to try something, buy something or talk about it with their friends.

We need to think of attention as an asset. It has value and should not be discounted. You wouldn’t toss $50,000 out your car window. Why waste it on an advertisement that means nothing, or a brand that doesn’t capture your spirit?

It’s time we do away with attention spam and do all we can to increase the collective intellectual attention span. You can help. Start by identifying who you want to reach and then do something relevant to them. Not to fit in with the rest of the world, but to specifically fit them.

I know there are others who share my growing frustration with attention spam. We’re tired of being herded toward things.

We’d rather be drawn to them instead.