We have over-indexed on snackable content.
Enough with the attention span myth.
Stories about our shrinking attention span are everywhere. It was 12 seconds. Now it’s eight. Which is shorter than a gold fish, according to the myth.
The problem with this myth is that content marketers feel an urgency to communicate everything quickly. The knee-jerk response is to focus on creating shorter content. Shorter headlines. Short sizzle videos. Keep everything above the fold of your web page.
Because people are in a hurry and only want bite-size chunks of information, right? And if we don’t do it, their attention spans will cause them to move on.
Wrong.
Here’s the problem with the trend toward snackable content. The answer to getting and keeping customer attention has nothing to do with speed. Or content length. It’s not about losing attention. Instead, we should focus on earning attention.
That may sound simple, but in practice, many have a hard time understanding the difference.
To prove my point, let’s talk about attention in the brain — what’s really happening according to neuroscience. The brain is constantly absorbing bits of information. Thousands of pieces of data every nanosecond from your senses — like sight, sound, and touch. We don’t retain all that data, just a small amount.
But according to Dr. Scott Stephenson, a neuroscientist I interviewed at Brigham Young University, the real insight is around the type of data we pay attention to.
“When our brain is doing its job at predicting our surroundings, our subconscious is in control. Only when there is an error, or something doesn’t match our predicted reality, does the conscious brain kick in. Only then do we become aware and notice the element that’s different.”
In other words, human attention is all about prediction errors. Or anomalies. And this can happen in an instant. I repeat, an instant. Meaning, if your brain can sift through thousands of bits of data in a nanosecond and decide what to keep or ignore, why would we think we have eight seconds to hold someone’s attention. To your brain, eight seconds is an eternity.
Only when your brain notices something unique or different from past experiences, that’s when your conscious brain lights up and pays attention. Your brain is trained to sift through mountains of data, second after second after second, looking for anomalies.
Once your brain notices an anomaly, the next step is to lock it down with a memory. And to do that, we need one more essential element — emotion. Here’s how Dr. Stephenson explains it.
“When locking in a memory, emotions are critical. In neuroscience, there’s another expression, ‘Neurons that fire together, wire together.’ In other words, the more activity you have in a certain pathway, the more it becomes plastic. And that plasticity is mediated by certain neurotransmitters and chemicals. Also known as the regulators of emotion.”
In neuroscience, the successful formula for attention is to find an anomaly that is emotionally charged. In layman terms, this means that the best way to earn and hold customer attention is with a unique idea that’s emotional. Not just a logical fact or data point, but something they can feel.
That’s the answer. An emotional anomaly. Not shorter content.
Too bad most marketers use the attention span story to focus on the wrong thing — snackable content. And this idea of attention span isn’t even valued in science. It’s simply a myth. Let’s dig into this one.
Where the 8-second myth began.
In the BBC World Service article, “Busting the attention span myth,” Simon Maybin researched the origin of the attention span story, and how our attention span has shrunk to less than a goldfish. Apparently, most of the data comes from a 2015 report published by the Consumer Insights team of Microsoft Canada.[i]
The Microsoft team got the shrinking attention span data from a source called Statistic Brain. And the sources mentioned by the Statistic Brain reference the National Center for Biotechnology Information at the US National Library of Medicine. When Maybin contacted the Center, they couldn’t find any record of the research. His conclusion is that it’s all a marketing story without any basis on fact.
One reason the myth has lasted is because it’s based on the truth that we do pay attention to important things. But rather than focus on the right types of things, the myth focuses on the length of time.
Dr. Gemma Briggs, a psychology lecturer at the Open University who studies attention in drivers, said the idea of attention span is meaningless. “It’s very much task-dependent. How much attention we apply to a task will vary depending on what the task demand is.”
In another article by Shaun Buck, a VIP contributing writer for entrepreneur.com, titled “The myth of the 8-second attention span,” we learn that giving attention to a specific task is all about choices and quality of content. We have so many choices today, and so many channels, that we don’t have to settle for boring or lame content. The myth of the short attention span ignores the “quality of content” or the type of task we are asking our brains to perform.[ii]
The real test of attention is all about content and choice.
If the content is awesome, consumers will give it more attention. Which means, it’s our job as marketers to entertain, educate, and capture customer attention long enough to sell to them. And not to simply focus on creating a bunch of fast content.
A time and place for snackable content.
Whenever the conversation around short attention spans turns to creating snackable content or 10-second videos or punchy headlines — just remember, it’s not about speed. It’s all about the story or quality of content. And if you want to succeed, then you need to spend your effort and resources on creating amazing content — not worrying or arguing about the length of content.
Don’t get me wrong, there is a time and a place for different lengths of content. I’m not saying that a short social post is useless.
In the Northwestern graduate program for Integrated Marketing Communications, they have a simple pyramid that shows the appropriate type of content for different levels of customer engagement and attention.
At the top of the pyramid is snackable or social content. But you have to understand that this type of content is shallow and not intended for deep customer engagement. Lower down the pyramid are longer blogs, articles, and interactive experiences. As you move down the pyramid, you find more in-depth content that’s designed for deeper engagement.
This pyramid is a great tool to understand what type of content to create for a variety of situations. If you want deeper engagement, create more engaging and longer content. If you want a quick hit, go for snackable stuff.
My point is that far too often, the reaction is to focus on speed, not quality of content.
If you want to hold the attention of consumers, then stop making lame content. Don’t blame it on attention span. And don’t focus on the wrong things. Not everything should be snackable. Not everything should fit above the fold.
If we create an emotional story with a new twist, the brain will be more engaged.Keeping customer attention is all about giving them good choices and quality content. If they like the content, they will keep consuming and give us their attention.
Stop focusing on time. Start creating unique and emotional experiences.
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Adam Morgan is an Executive Creative Director at Adobe, with experience in creativity, strategy, and storytelling for over 23 years. He’s a keynote speaker at conferences and events — and was recently named an Adobe MAX Master speaker. Before Adobe, he was a creative director at several international ad agencies, delivering award-winning advertising and campaigns. He was named a 40 under 40 business leader by Utah Business Magazine, and Utah Ad Professional of the Year in 2014. To read one of his articles on data-driven creativity or more about his new book, “Sorry Spock, Emotion Drives Business,” that proves the value of creativity and design to your clients and stakeholders, visit him at adamWmorgan.com.
