A new buzzword has been making rounds in the industry called Attention Economy. This translates to the human capacity for attention, which is limited and that the content and events vying for that attention far exceed that capacity. There is an information overload by brands today that consumers go through and hence, rather than creating clear pathways for consumers they are only causing more confusion or muddied water in their conversations.
At the dentsu e4m report launch, Anita Kotwani, CEO Media South Asia- dentsu India deep dived with Sandeep Walunj, Chief Marketing Officer- Nippon India Mutual Fund, Somesh Surana, Head - Digital Business Group; Marketing - HDFC ERGO General Insurance, Abraham Alapatt, President and Group Head - Marketing, Thomas Cook India, Mangesh Someshwar, Creative Head, Tata Digital and Sunil Nat, Head of Ecommerce; Digital Strategy, Galderma to understand the shortening attention spans of consumers and its impact on brand communications.
Nat began the discussion and agreed that we are overloaded with a lot of information today. “In a world where we call it a VUCA world (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity), information is bombarded from all the brands even if you don't want to engage with them.”
From the last 24 years, earlier the attention span was close to 18 seconds, then in 2010 it became close to 12 seconds then it came down to three seconds and now the attention span is about 1.5 seconds, he shared. “But why we are losing attention is because we are being bombarded with a lot of information. This is where we need to change how brands communicate in a personalised manner.”
It is now the responsibility of the marketers to fine-tune the overload of information available and reach out to the right audience with the right communication at the right time, he said.
Surana agreed and shared that he faces an overload of information. In the last week he counted that he received close to 1,000 promotional messages and WhatsApps that were mostly of brands he wasn’t looking for. He came across close to 200-250 posts of ads or banners. And all of this when he is registered as a DND customer.
“How can we deal with this problem? It all depends on the product, service and brand. It cannot be a one-size-fits-all solution,” he added.
But how advertisers are now looking at this attention economy is, it is becoming a critical factor to build their strategies around it and the concept of attention is seeing the fleeting scarcity of attention that a brand gets from its consumer and specifically in digital, this attention is in high demand.
Walunj highlighted the top trends of the attention economy. He said. “It's not only the information coming from outside to you there is a lot of noise that is coming from within as well. With all of that polarisation happening on social media, there is so much competition, you have to be fit, you have to be seen doing cool things every now and then.”
Now as marketers there are a few ways to solve this at their end, suggested Walunj. How you customise your message as much as possible is the first. “Rather than devising one message and sending it to three lakh people at nine in the morning, it is important to do homework and utilise data proliferation to understand who would be interested in your product. Micro-segmenting and fine-tuning the message according to the target customer is crucial.”
Secondly, with the help of technology, quite a lot of research techniques are available for brands to fine-tune. There are brain mapping-based techniques that are available and one of them is called functional MRI, which actually checks which part of the brain is getting activated when the consumer sees your message.
Thirdly, rather than looking at the old FY metrics like you know the TRPs and the viewership, brands need to be considering a lot about Affinity score. “We need to be very clear as to in that limited microsecond of attention that you're getting, where is it that the consumer is going to be more immersed into the medium or message so that your communication has a chance to work,” he said.
Speaking about the space of content optimisation and personalisation, the Tata Digital executive said, “Attention has become the currency and can be seen in marketing and everywhere. The role of AI is huge in this and I think we can layer everything with AI since we are still scratching the surface of AI, there's a long way to go”.
In the fight for attention, storytelling is the king as per him and to get attention it has to be about storytelling. If a brand’s storytelling is different they will definitely get attention. The key also lies in whether the brand is consistent in its storytelling, whether they are speaking in the right way, in the right tone, in the right language.
Surana added, “We need to get the mind share for the market share to follow”. And if brands really want to capture the mind share they need to curate relevant and contextual storytelling.
Alapatt of Thomas Cook India opines that we as customers demand more content. We consume more content, we spend more time with our devices, and so more content is being created to be thrown at you. Hence, at one level this is our own making. But the good part according to him is that AI and algorithms today will give you more content in the areas that you're interested in.
By the end of the discussion, Kotwani asked everyone to choose whether the situation seems to be a clearer path or muddied water.
Alapatt, Someshwar, Walunj, Surana and Nat all chose ‘Clearer path’ as the future ahead for the attention economy.
Kotwani wrapped the discussion and said, “The clearer paths give you refined strategies, it gives you data-driven decision-making pieces, it gives you regulatory guidelines as well. So that's where the clearer paths come in. I still think there's complexity because there's evolving consumer behaviour, there's competition for attention and there are ethical dilemmas that we all need to solve. Navigating this terrain between clearer paths and complexity will require a balance of innovation, ethical awareness and adaptability to evolving attention patterns.”