InsideWork » Wait Just a Second: » Advertising, Attention Economy

Jim Hancock posted on the "Blink" ads Clear Channel radio network is testing — one-second audio stings meant to grab listeners attention, presumably in a positive way — to which I can only say, "How wearisome."

The "Blink" approach is intrusive and over time will significantly rewire the attention spans of an already ADD populace. Included in the rewiring is the unintended consequence of shutting down the very audience Clear Channel most wants (and needs) to reach in order to be a viable business in the years ahead.

Thomas Davenport and John Beck have reservations about the limits of human attention in the presence of too much information: "…the use of attention-getting technologies may also reach the saturation point of human cognition, which in effect shuts down perception in an overstimulating environment" (The Attention Economy, Harvard Business School Press, p 79). Shutting down perception . . . can that really be the effect Clear Channel is going for?

The more the words, the less the meaning, and how does that profit anyone?

— Ecclesiates 6:11

I think every business person has to ask, "Are we adding to the noise or are we adding to the meaning? Because, as much as I don’t believe there are any sustainable markets for noise, I think people very much in the market for meaning.

Davenport and Beck also note in passing Jakob Neilsen’s remark about the regard internet companies have for customers: "Most internet entrepreneurs treat the users’ attention as a third world country to be strip mined" (Attention Economy, p 87). Isn’t that a beautiful image for a business plan? But honestly, how far off the mark would you be if you changed the sentence to read "Most radio advertising treat the listeners’ attention as third world countries to be strip mined?"

And, of course, Seth Godin has been beating the drum about the uselessness of interruption marketing for some time now. "As a marketer," he wrote in All Marketers are Liars, "you can no longer force people to play attention" (Portfolio Books, p 47). He is even more to the point of this post in Permission Marketing:

Every day you’re exposed to more than four hours of media. Most of it is optimized to interrupt what you’re doing. And it’s getting increasingly harder to find a little peace and quiet.

The ironic thing is that marketers have responded to this problem with the single worst cure possible.To deal with the clutter and the diminished effectiveness of Interruption Marketing, they’re interrupting us even more!

— Permission Marketing, Simon & Schuster, pp 26,27)

In the light of all this, the biblical injunctions to be still, to be silent, gain greater preciousness for me. How do we live in a world where there is no silence? It’s the silence that makes the words more powerful. It’s the pauses and rests and modulations that transform droning into dynamic music. It’s the white space that makes colors come alive on the page; the negative space that creates depth on the canvas. That’s what I want. It’s what I need.