Attention: The Universal Currency
What is money, really?
Why do we use it, and why do we think it’s so valuable?
Well the obvious answer is that it buys us stuff. Stuff that we need to survive. And of course it does.
But, theoretically, (barring local legislation against such practices) things other than money can be exchanged for goods that we need. Bartering did exist at some point. Trade without money occurred, in the good old days before government-backed cash.
People used livestock, food, tools, clothes and land to trade with. The basic necessities of life had value, and so people were willing to exchange for them. Later on, rare metals were used.
But people couldn’t just trade anything — sticks and stones would have been worthless, as would corn cobs, spoiled meat, or bird feathers.
So what made some things useful as a currency, and others not so much?
According to reference.com:
The main characteristics of money are durability, divisibility, portability, acceptability, limited supply and uniformity. Money serves as a store of value, a unit of account and as a medium of exchange.
Pay particular attention to that last sentence — it outlines the 3 reasons for having money in the first place.
It’s a store of value, meaning it allows you to keep the wealth that you have gathered over time.
It’s a unit of account, meaning you can use it to measure transactions.
And it’s a medium of exchange, meaning that it’s something that other people want and are willing to trade for.
Did you know that U.S. presidents only make $400,000 per year while in office?
That’s only $1.6 million for an entire term.
Do you think that bothers them? Maybe they are afraid they won’t be able to live well in their much deserved retirement, or afford the security measures that an ex-president would need?
No. These former heads of state don’t worry about that at all. In fact, if they made exactly $0 per year, they would still be just fine after they got out of office.
Not even taking into account the presidential pension, after leaving office these ex-presidents rake in the cash by joining the “speaking circuit” — accepting enormous fees in exhange for giving speeches at political events, university graduations, business seminars, and the like.
Bill Clinton famously made $750,000 at a speaking gig in Hong Kong in 2011.
George W. Bush and his father, George H.W. Bush, also spoke for tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars per speech.
Now why would anyone pay that much money for a former U.S. president to speak?
Is the wisdom they gained while in office really worth that much?
No, that’t not it.
The answer is: attention.
You see, everyone knows who these people are. If you’ve been the leader of the largest economy on the face of the earth and commander in chief of the greatest military force in the history of the planet for 8, or even just 4 years of your life, everyone pretty much knows you. And if they somehow don’t know you by name, “former president of the United States” will do just fine.
With that much name recognition, any event flier that features these people on it will draw the crowds like nobody’s business.
This, by the way, is the reason why YouTube is willing to pay their biggest stars so much money — top earners such as Logan Paul, Pewdiepie, Jacksepticeye, and Markiplier all made over $14 million in 2018 according to Forbes.
These new age rock stars have millions of eyeballs on them, which means they are drawing millions of eyeballs to the ads that they allow on their channel, and to the YouTube platform itself. This attention is worth cold hard cash.
Attention is an actual currency. It may not be something you can see or feel directly, but it does carry the exact characteristics that make actual physical money as valuable as it is.
It can be gathered and accumulated like money, it can be preserved (though admittedly, it doesn’t hold value nearly as well as physical cash), it can be exchanged, and it’s something that people desperately want.
The advertising market could be renamed the attention market, as that’s all that advertising really is — exchanging money for attention.
This market is essentially what entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuck is talking about in his book Crush It: Why Now Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion. It was a huge hit when it was released back in 2009, when this new generation of internet entrepreneurs were just starting to figure out that all you needed to do to make money online was be able to grab people’s eyeballs and direct their attention. This ability in itself basically guaranteed income — as where attention goes, money follows.
But the point that I want to stress here is not just that attention leads to money. I am saying that attention is a form of currency all by itself. It can be gathered, through hard work, luck, or both, and then “traded” for the other things that a person needs. In a way, it is a more raw form of money than actual cash, as it is desired at a more intrinsic level than the paper dollar.
When the government collapses and our cash values go to zero, people will still be trading attention. If they want to sell anything at all, if they want commerce to continue in any meaningful way, there will always be a market for attention.
Attention is money. Attention is power. Use the techniques I have given you to grab attention to direct your audience’s eyeballs.
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