The myopia of only paying attention to attention
One thing most marketers can agree on in today's media landscape is that it's an enormous challenge to break through to and connect with people. We are told daily that our brand-building campaigns compete in the "attention economy" and that if we don't grab people in the first few seconds, we will fail.
I hear this a lot as a researcher at Microsoft who spent the last two years audience-testing the videos that rebranded the $11 billion Office business into Microsoft 365. But I also understand human attention more broadly as a...