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A powerful statistic made me rethink the way we, as marketers, grab our audience’s attention.

What you would read in the New York Times in a week is the amount of information someone would have learned in their entire life 100 years ago.

Let that sink in.

This made me think more than ever about the role the brain plays in communicating brands with audiences, and which of those brands are grabbing attention. Marketing theory has many different funnels and models that focus on how we move our audience from X to Y, but not one that fully addresses the barriers to attention.

As the New York Times example shows, the problem a new model needs to address is the information overload age. We are all bombarded with information. Because brain information goes way beyond what you read and is everything you see, everything you smell, feel, etc. All of the senses require the brain’s attention, everything you experience. Because of this, the brain has mechanisms to protect us from this overload. The brain filters out certain information, such as: B. You don’t feel the clothes on your body all the time. This is known as selective filtering.

In the context of marketing and advertising, let’s imagine we are walking down a street. They will filter out the shops, the people, the bus stops, and the world around you. Everything your brain doesn’t think is important is lost. This is where selective attention comes into play; Summary of the things you are preparing for. Ultimately, what is important deserves attention. In a famous study by Simons and Chabris, they demonstrated this by asking participants to watch a basketball game and count the number of times the ball was thrown. 50% of the participants did not notice a girl in a gorilla suit walking through the players in the middle of the game.

Value marking

Enter value tagging – rank the things you are setting yourself up for according to their importance to survive and thrive. There are two brain pathways that this is related to – the logical element (survival) and the warmer element, aspirations, people I love, etc. (thrive). The more we see information as irrelevant to our human desire for survival or prosperity, the less likely it is that we will adjust to this information.

As marketers, have we lost that idea?

I’ve seen a lot about the importance of the digital lately as more and more people are sitting on their phones. Many marketers are guilty of being where our audience is. I claim this is the wrong approach. Creativity is more important than ever – not just in the same room.

My point of view was perfectly illustrated by Superbowl advertising last weekend. Indeed, and Guaranteed Rate, both used the same stock footage in their ads, showing that brands feel it is more important to be where their audience is than to invest their budget in creativity and actually with their audience to get into resonance. The price for a 30-second spot in the 2021 Superbowl is $ 5,500,000. Yes, with this budget you get a guaranteed reach, but the effects will be lost if a “value tag” does not form in the minds of your audience.

The question we should actually be asking our clients and agencies is how do we move from selectively filtering our audiences to making sure they value our brands. This is what your strategy should focus on. This is the funnel that matters. Be less in their life, but when you are there you create value, not noise.

Contribution to Branding Strategy Insider by: Emma Gordon is a planner / strategist at Halo

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