Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about attention, and specifically about what seems to be happening to the way we try to capture it.
You can see it quite clearly in social media and advertising. Video content now often needs to do something within the first few seconds to stop people scrolling. We’re introducing who we are and what we do almost immediately. Calls to action are being pulled forward because there’s a chance people won’t make it to the end. There are more cuts, more text overlays, more camera changes and more pattern interrupts.
Even carousel posts feel different. Where you might once have had a relatively consistent visual treatment from slide to slide, now the design can change dramatically throughout the post. And increasingly, it feels like one video on a screen isn’t enough either. Sometimes there are two or three different things happening at once.
I understand why this is happening. As marketers, we’re competing for attention in an environment where there is always something else available. If something doesn’t feel interesting enough quickly enough, people can move on almost instantly.
But the more I notice it, the more I keep coming back to the same question:
“Where does this end?”
If everyone responds to the same pressure by making content faster, shorter, louder or more visually dynamic, does that just keep escalating? Do we eventually reach a point where we need so much stimulation just to hold someone’s attention that the whole thing starts working against us?
I’m not sure.
And I also don’t think it’s as simple as saying that our attention spans are getting shorter.
People still spend two hours watching a film. They listen to long podcasts. They read books. They spend hours gaming or going deeply into something they care about. So it seems quite possible that we haven’t simply lost the ability to concentrate. Maybe we’ve become more selective about what feels worth concentrating on.
That distinction feels important to me, because it changes the marketing question.
For a long time, we’ve talked about how to capture attention. But perhaps the more useful question now is whether we’ve actually earned it.
At the same time, I’m noticing the opposite behaviour
What makes this particularly interesting is that, alongside all this acceleration, there seems to be another movement happening at the same time.
People are talking about deleting social media or reducing the amount of time they spend on it. There are people buying dumbphones and analogue alarm clocks, reading physical books again, joining book clubs and running clubs, looking for smaller communities and attending events where phones are discouraged or removed altogether.
There are even businesses being created around the idea of getting people offline.
I’m also seeing more interest in micro-communities and in brands creating physical moments that bring people together in a more meaningful way. That could be a workshop, a dinner, a community event or simply an experience where the value comes from being there with other people rather than documenting it.
At the same time, long-form content clearly hasn’t disappeared. People are still willing to spend a significant amount of time with podcasts, newsletters, YouTube videos and other formats that ask much more of their attention than a piece of short-form content does.
So I’m interested in the fact that both of these things seem to be happening at once.
We’re getting better and better at creating fast, frictionless, highly stimulating experiences, while at the same time there seems to be a growing desire to step away from them.
I’m not sure that means one will replace the other. My instinct is actually the opposite. I think we may see the two become more pronounced.
The attention paradox
That’s really where the idea of an attention paradox comes from for me.
The more technology gives us speed, convenience, stimulation and choice, the more we seem to value some of the things that sit on the other side of that.
When we have access to endless connection, intimacy can feel more meaningful.
When there is an overwhelming amount of content available, curation starts to matter more.
When everything is convenient, effort can sometimes make something feel more worthwhile.
And when we’re surrounded by constant stimulation, quiet and presence can start to feel unusually valuable.
I keep coming back to the idea that presence itself could become something of a premium.
Not because we’re suddenly going to reject technology. I don’t think that’s realistic, and it’s not what I’m arguing for. I use social media. I use AI. I see enormous value in both.
What I’m more interested in is how our behaviour might change around them.
We might end up with increasingly fast, personalised, frictionless content on one side, while on the other we place more value on things that require us to be more deliberate: books, long conversations, thoughtful newsletters, workshops, physical experiences, local communities, genuine expertise and face-to-face connection.
Not because one category is good and the other is bad, but because they satisfy different needs.
AI adds another layer to this
AI makes this even more interesting because it can remove an enormous amount of cognitive effort from our lives.
Again, I think that can be incredibly useful.
But there’s a distinction I keep thinking about between using AI to augment our thinking and using it to outsource our thinking.
If technology allows us to avoid more and more of the effort involved in thinking, then perhaps the value shifts towards the things that still require judgement.
Knowing what matters. Knowing what to question. Being able to discern between something that sounds convincing and something that is actually useful. Developing taste. Having enough experience to know when something feels right or wrong.
If information itself becomes abundant, then simply having access to information becomes less differentiating. What may become more valuable is how we interpret it, what we do with it and whether we can bring any original thought to it.
That feels quite connected to what is happening with attention too.
What does this mean for marketing?
I don’t think the answer is that brands should stop making Reels or abandon short-form content or suddenly make everything “slow”.
Different formats have different jobs.
Short-form can be incredibly useful for discovery. Long-form can create more understanding. Email can create a more deliberate relationship. Community and physical experiences can create the kind of human connection that is very difficult to replicate in a feed.
So perhaps the opportunity is to think less about how every individual piece of content can grab the maximum amount of attention and more about the overall attention ecosystem a brand is creating.
How does someone first come across you? What happens if they want to understand you more deeply? Where do they go if they want to spend more time with your thinking? What kind of relationship are you building with them over time?
That feels more interesting to me than assuming every touchpoint needs to work in the same way.
And I also wonder whether there comes a point where brands stop trying to continually reshape themselves around whatever the platform currently rewards.
There’s obviously a need to understand behaviour and adapt to it. But at some point, perhaps brands also need to be confident enough to stay true to who they are, what they believe and the people they actually want to connect with.
If your audience values thoughtfulness, depth or a more considered point of view, trying to communicate like the most frenetic creator on the internet probably isn’t going to bring you closer to them.
Maybe that becomes part of the distinction.
From capturing attention to earning it
The shift I keep coming back to is from capturing attention to earning attention.
That feels particularly relevant as the amount of content available to us continues to grow.
If there is more content, more personalisation, more AI-generated information and more competition for the same finite amount of human attention, then simply producing more doesn’t necessarily feel like the most useful response.
For me, this is where it connects back to intentional marketing.
I’ve always been interested in the idea of doing fewer things with greater clarity and purpose rather than continually adding more because that’s what the market seems to demand.
And perhaps attention needs to be approached in the same way.
Not simply: how do we get people to stop?
But: what are we asking them to stop for? What are we giving them once they do? Is there enough value there to justify the attention we’re asking for?
I don’t know exactly where any of this goes, and I think that’s part of why I find it so interesting.
We’re living through a period where technology is accelerating at an extraordinary pace, while at the same time people seem to be developing behaviours that protect them from some of its effects.
That tension feels worth paying attention to.
Maybe over the next five or ten years we’ll see even more polarisation between fast, frictionless, algorithmic experiences and slower, more intentional ones. Maybe brands will start thinking more seriously about the role they want to play across both.
Or maybe the whole thing evolves in a direction none of us are expecting.
But I do think the question is becoming harder to ignore.
Where are you seeing this go?