The proliferation of digital channels has disintermediated our collective attention into endless personalized streams. It’s no surprise that conflict coupled with disbelief thrives on the internet as parties informed by different echo-chambers cannot reconcile their different worlds.
[Part of the series: Marketing Pains ]
We all used to get roughly the same news. It was on TV at night or in the newspaper the next morning. Now your news may be entirely different to the next person’s depending on the medium, source and your taste. The same goes for other types of information and media too.
It’s not all heterogeny though, there is still very much commonality but popularity doesn’t look like it used to. …
What happens when media becomes interactive and skippable? Messages and stories get compressed and sweetened. To deliver a punchline or a completed idea, everything shrinks when the audience’s attention becomes more fickle.
[Part of the series: Marketing Pains ]
When we were kids we dreamed of being able to fast-forward a live TV stream. It’s obviously impossible, yet this is essentially what digital feeds and on-demand video do. What we never dreamed, was how this would change the viewing material.
Content in fast-paced skippable environments lives and dies by how effectively it can hook and hold audiences. This skews it to certain subjects and more obvious storytelling. It’s a beauty contest.
Interruption is central to advertising. …
Constant access to media has turned us into compulsive snackers and triggered a cycle of shorter attention bursts, shorter media portions, increased tempo, quicker payoff and algorithmic optimization.
[Part of the series: Marketing Pains ]
Media consumption used to have a time and a place. Phones have changed that. We now carry portable, interactive TV sets, radios and readers with us everywhere we go. Media blankets every part of our lives now.
This is a shift of evolutionary significance, as we have all but lost one of humankind’s key states — boredom has quietly disappeared in the last few decades. Standing in a queue, waiting at a red light, standing in the lift, waiting for your food or a train or a plane, waiting for anything — used to be dead time. …
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