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Sunday, November 06, 2005
It's Sunday.
Will I:
- Watch the football game?
- Do yard work?
- Catch up on work work?
- Work on my presentation for a conference and pack my bags?
- Go for a run?
- Watch this TV ad about Chuck Schwab, or reach for the remote?
- Spend more time with family?
- Read RSS feed #52.3?
- Search for a BENQ projector? Buy the projector? Buy a competing product? Do nothing?
The attention deficit is very real - see Chris Tolles' great post on this. Meanwhile, PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem is studying ways of making us pay more attention to golf in November. But isn't Finchem fighting the attention deficit? Isn't that just a zero sum game, a game where you want to take a bit more attention away from 30+ football teams, 30+ hockey teams, 30+ basketball teams, 5,000 shows, 10,000,000 movies, 10,000,000 websites...? Better Finchem sticks to preserving the greatness of what he's already got, rather than asking people to care about golf during football season. Even better, for those who aren't Finchem, is the opportunity to invent whole new categories that get talked about for their own sake - like the golf reality show The Big Break or something relatively pedestrian, even, that reaches directly out to the average player, like the Golf Channel's Playing Lessons with the Pros. People talk about these shows among themselves.
Chances are the same lesson applies to most marketers. Don't ask people to pay attention when there is no reasonable expectation of doing so. Faced with so many choices and messages fighting for one's attention, raking leaves seems like fun.
Attention is finite. You can catch people's attention when they're actively seeking to solve a problem or indulge themselves or buy a gift or do something special. Not when they're, um, not seeking anything of the sort.
Posted by
Andrew Goodman
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