Command Attention, Command The World
Humans make a choice in every moment where to direct their attention. And, like energy, it can be directed in different levels of intensity and duration. And when those levels of collective attention energy are strong, it has the potential to shape something — human minds, and therefore human actions. Because even after attention moves on, if the subject was intense enough, or lasted long enough, the attention can be turned into a thought, a feeling, a memory — an impression. Think of heat and pressure turning coal into a diamond (or votes). So despite the seeming fleeting nature of attention, those that harness it shape the world. Period. For better or for worse.
Like many in the media business, I have been watching the unfolding industry reactions to the unlikely political candidacy of Donald J. Trump. One thing I would argue it proves unequivocally is that the ability to capture attention in a fragmented media world has never been more powerful. Let’s look at why…
“I think the election of Donald Trump, or even just his nomination, could jolt America awake and give us at least some of the political reforms we so badly need,” M.G. Siegler said in his recent post, “Why I’m Secretly Rooting For President Trump.” His argument: There’s a lot that’s really messed up in the election process.
Siegler is right. What he’s alluding to is the fact that there are specific benefits of Trump doing this well, mainly highlighting the issue of the primary system pushing people to extremes and the fact that both major parties contain unnatural interest groups. (For more depth on this front, see Clay Shirky’s fantastic tweetstorm, “Social media has turned Republican & Democratic Parties into host bodies for 3rd party candidates.” Personally, I don’t think social media is what caused it, but it’s what exposed the weaknesses in the system.)
But I’ll add something else. The success of Trump has exposed not just deep-seeded issues in the electoral process, but also some of the most problematic issues regarding the relationship between the people who have traditionally had “a voice” (aka could command attention) — politicians, the media, and the ad industry — and the people whom we consider to be our “audience” (aka givers of attention).
There are a bunch of reasons why Trump is doing so well, many of which are pretty insidious, but here’s the one that I want to highlight relating to the value of human attention: The Donald understands human attention. He understands that it’s scarce. He understands that you have to keep people captivated, engaged, and surprised. Or, as John Oliver put bluntly in a now-legendary takedown on his HBO show last weekend, “he’s unpredictable and entertaining.”
But it’s not just a matter of Trump having an outsize personality. It’s that the system itself just doesn’t respect human attention. Our media landscape is wildly oversaturated, with more and more content (both political and non-political) vying for our attention, and most candidates’ campaigns just don’t seem to understand this.
Trump is blunt, and knows what medium he’s working in. His mastery of Twitter, full of one-syllable superlatives and insults (“Bad!” “Clown!” “Lame!”), often with a few spelling errors (good for authenticity, I suppose, and feels less scripted), demolishes the thinking behind traditional political talking points, whereas other candidates have spilled over 140-character limits and into lengthy tweetstorms. Now, I’m perfectly fine with tweetstorms (I linked to one above) but I’m a member of the media industry, not an undecided voter who’s getting bombarded on all fronts with attack ads. Here’s the real kicker — Trump isn’t even buying very many ads. He, or someone on his team, gets that consumers are sick of advertising, particularly in primary states about to vote where the political ad volume can only be described as an avalanche.
Trump’s success in harnessing attention should be a learning experience for every single one of us who deals with audiences; to put it another way, there’s a lot that Trump disrespects, but one thing he does respect is the value of human attention and what to do with it when he has it. He gathers and hoards human attention. And the power of attention, once captured, can then be turned into votes.
And in a world where attention is scarce, those that know what it means to command it will rule. We are getting a potentially very scary lesson in that right now. But Kanye 2020 should be interesting.
