The attention problem

The attention economy narrative has a problem of its own.

By framing attention as fundamentally scarce — a finite resource being competed for by an infinite number of messages — it leads brands toward a war of volume and frequency rather than a more useful question: what earns attention, and why?

Attention is not scarce. People spend more hours than ever consuming content, watching video, reading long-form pieces and listening to podcasts. The supply of attention has not shrunk. What has changed is the competition for it — and the bar required to earn it.

System1's research on advertising effectiveness offers a useful frame. The ads and content that earn the most attention — and, crucially, are best remembered — tend to share three qualities: they are emotionally resonant, they are distinctive, and they are consistent with what has come before from that brand.

Each of these qualities is within the control of the brand, if it is willing to do the harder strategic work first.

Emotional resonance requires knowing your audience deeply enough to understand what they care about — not just their job title and pain points, but their ambitions, anxieties and the way they think about their world.

Distinctiveness requires genuine creative commitment to a set of brand codes — visual, verbal and tonal signals that make the brand immediately recognisable without context.

Consistency requires the discipline to resist the temptation to reinvent when the work feels stale internally, even when it is still building memory externally.

The attention problem is not really a media problem. It is a strategy problem. Brands that solve the strategy problem earn the attention. The rest compete on volume and price.