The Fight for Mindshare and What It’s Doing to Customer Attention

Media has always been a terrific barometer of customer behavior. In fact, at its core, the purpose of any commercial media property is to connect consumers to companies, to act as a conduit or channel to introduce products and services to people who need or want them. The entertainment value, the clever copywriting and pictures are simply the distraction that serves to lure and hold the interest of the buyer. Anyone who cares to debate this would need to prove that subscription based magazines — free of any advertising revenue — have worked on a large scale as a business operating model of publishing.

All one has to do is track the direction of media, and this includes the visual presentation as well as the actual channel, format or form that the medium is, in order to learn more about our society. With this understanding, and knowing that content is more plentiful and channels for media more abundant, and seeing clearly that we, as a society are under incredible pressure to keep up, what are the consequences? What is our future?

When the conversion to online media (and attrition of the print-centric model) began 14-15 years ago, we in the business were like children stricken by a great natural disaster or storm. We knew that deeper change was inevitable, and rumors about the “demise of print journalism” ran among the editorial offices of consumer titles in NYC like California wildfires in July.

I spent the first 10-15 years of my career in magazine design and among the many rules of successful presentation, one stood out over the last 15 years: Give several options to your readers by tiering the levels of engagement. It was clear by 1985 that our society was speeding up at an unprecendented pace, that there were many more magazines, and a certain “fracturing” of the media industry. In the late 80's, about 400 new magazines entered the market each year. By the early 90's that number changed to about 1,000. Consumers were carnivorously digesting content at a pace that was unimaginable at the time.

It was Darwinian, I thought. I postulated that our species was encountering a dramatic shift or increase in normal evolutionary development in a compressed span of time. In 1995, I told my clients that we should create a 10 minute, 20 minute, and 30 minute “read” for all of their subscribers or single-copy customers. By 2000, that sound bite changed to 5 minute, 10 and 15 minute tiers of readership. All of our publishing clients wanted a quicker, lighter, easier read. Entry points were all the rage and the more, the better. “Engage the customer with energetic design and create a faster, easier, more accessible design,” our clients said. The mantra of all publishing clients was clear: “Our readers are pressed for time, so we must make the stories shorter, add more quick-hit sections and entry points such as callouts and captions, and infographics. We must continue to win the race to engage the customer.”

Two columns became three, and three columns became four, and four columns became five — or six. The design presentation of magazines took a monumental shift with the introduction of publications like Wired, Maxim, and later, another Felix Dennis publication, The Week, which condensed complex global stories into a topline summary of 50-100 words. In order to stave off attrition to online content, the feature well disappeared altogether in some magazines. The cost of paper was higher and the print model, as a source of revenue was clearly in trouble. The notion of integrated media/marketing and custom publishing was a life preserver for awhile for entrenched, large print publishers, but the change to the model and future of editorial work was becoming obvious. Editors and writers sniped at the loss of consumer attention, referring to the new “McNugget journalism.”

On any traditional media or consumer collateral and literature, these days I say we’re aiming for reader levels of 15 seconds, 2 minutes and 5 minutes. It depends on the audience and purpose of the publication — whether it is offline or online and a half dozen other variables, but generally, the menu of tiered times for readers is shrinking rapidly.

The internet surpassed print media as a primary flagship marketing and editorial channel around 2005-2006. (With no statistical data and nothing more than the anecdotes of a professional service provider/agency owner, this is my best calculation.) At IridiumGroup, our revenues in 2006 from developing interactive products might have been 15-20% of our sales. Today, just 18 months later, that number would be closer to 40-50%.

Along with the advancement of online communications, we saw the continuing erosion of consumer focus and attention. Today, Blog readers and rabid internet consumers are digesting data with the attention span of gnats — an unattractive image, but one that seems oddly appropriate.

There’s less loyalty, unfortunately. There is greater transience, and across a potential universe of channels that has increased by 10,000 percent in 10 years, it seems that we cannot get enough stimulation, content and ideas into our heads fast enough. It's as if there's one massive, global epidemic of ADD.

I have asked a number of clients and friends exactly how many emails they receive each day and the answer ranges from 60-80 to 130-150. In the concentration of actual work time — an assumption of 8 hours that in itself, appears to be morphing into real time 24/7 access — that means about 14 or 15 emails per hour received. Multiply that number by the time required to read and comprehend the email correspondence, to act and consider the number of emails that require a response — and we’re not left with much time to actually conduct any other type of work.

The Third Screen
The surge in mobile content is not exactly a sign that messages will grow to be more thoughtful. There’s little space to project any substantial amount of content, first of all. It seems highly unlikely that this area will not explode further in coming months as Mr. Jobs and Apple debut a more economically viable iPhone for the masses. A million units were sold in the first week, an accomplishment that allowed Jobs to declare, "IPhone 3G had a stunning opening weekend." The new Apple Apps store that went live last week is designed to ensure the success of the core product through an exclusive opportunity for Apple to offer all applications. Vendors are guarantee a 70% cut of sales by Apple, which is another smart move that will introduce many developers and entrench B2B relationships and also for Apple, a chance to build relationships with their consumers, who have never been shy to download content to their iPods and iPhones.

And where is it all headed? Well, as much as consumers complain about being bombarded with advertising and content, not many seem to be shunning the new technologies and gadgets as they are brought to market. Without a doubt, one would have to assume that we’re reading and digesting, or comprehending ominous amounts of content and ideas faster than any species over the course of history.

Our company is presently creating a campaign of materials for a large, preeminent foundation that has allocated $50 million to study how digital media and learning are affecting children, especially teenagers, so there is indeed an effort to benchmark and understand the ramifications, both socially and intellectually. The study includes all electronic devices such as gaming devices, cellphone and products like the iPod, as well as computers and other PDAs.

And for me. . . what will I be reading this Summer? Well, I’ve always wanted to dive into a Tolstoy novel or learn more about the writings of Hemingway. But for now, I think I’ll manage however I can to keep my head above water with any one of the other 6,000 sources of daily news online.