Attention now!

One date, two places - and a huge contrast.

The World Economic Forum annual meeting opened in Davos on 20 January, so the 25th edition of the Edelman Trust Barometer was published talking about a 'crisis of grievance'. This is the gathering where business leaders and financiers think big thoughts and make great claims about the good they do in the world. Here gathered the cheerleaders of globalisation and stakeholder capitalism.

Meanwhile in Washington DC, 20 January saw the inauguration of the second term of President Trump. No further commentary is needed, other than to explore the question of attention because it's of professional interest to public relations practitioners. Luckily, we have a helpful guide: US commentator and broadcaster Chris Hayes has written a forthcoming book on this topic; a long excerpt was published in The Guardian newspaper. Yes, it's a long read explaining why we now have short attention spans and how one politician has mastered the art of attracting attention.

'You simply cannot write about how the rise of attention as the most valuable resource has changed our politics without writing about Trump. He is the political figure who most fully exploited the new rules of the attention age. He seemed to sense intuitively – born of a combination of his experience with the New York City tabloids and his own psychological needs – that attention is all that matters.'

But are the rest of us keeping up?

'As the old models for how to win attention and how to use it erode, we are left with a struggle for attention itself, a war of all against all, in every moment. Despite being embedded in the attention age, despite our lamentations of its effects, and our phone addictions, and our addled, distracted mental states, I think we all still retain an outdated model of how public conversation happens. We are still thinking in terms of “debate” – a back-and-forth, or a conversation, or discussion.

'But that is not at all what’s happening.'

Chris Hayes describes himself, a broadcaster, as working in the 'attention industry'. Others are playing the game.

'Climate activists around the world have taken increasingly desperate measures to produce the kind of spectacle that will focus public attention. Some have taken to parking themselves in the middle of a road, binding themselves to each other with their arms handcuffed together inside tubes, refusing to move. Traffic builds up, people get angry and eventually news cameras arrive. Then there are the museum protests in which a few climate activists enter a museum and throw soup or paint on a famous work of art, which seem designed to create a sense of shock and revulsion. Other protests have disrupted concerts or sports contests.'

It's crude. It's unsophisticated. It's often illegal. We've been trying to wean ourselves off 'raising awareness' as a legitimate objective to focus instead on what matters, on behaviour change. But who doesn't find it's getting harder and harder to gain attention whether it's from the media, or on social media, or in terms of search rankings, or simply by getting a response to email messages?

We need to pay attention to the reasons we're earning less attention.

There's a third perspective on 20 January - it's also known as Blue Monday (as Andy Green explains below).

Here are some other things worth paying attention to from this month.

Profession

CIPR unveils new 2025-2029 strategy

• Maja Pawinska Sims: Meta Global Affairs Chief Nick Clegg Steps Down (3 January) ‘Meta president of global affairs Nick Clegg, who has been with the social media giant for nearly seven years, has announced he is leaving the firm this year.’

Purpose, sustainability and ESG

• Jeremy Cohen: Six trends to watch: a Blurred view on sustainability in 2025 (3 January) ‘Whilst populists look to unwind regulation, regulation with teeth will simultaneously start to bite in 2025. The impact of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) will start to be felt beyond the EU, for foreign-owned entities with a significant EU presence or even supply chains that run through the continent.’

Careers, teams and skills

• Katie Macaulay: Are You Sitting (Too) Comfortably? The Surprising Cost of Complacency (16 January) ‘Complacency isn’t just a business risk; it’s a creative dead end. By staying vigilant, curious, and open to growth, we ensure ‘good enough’ never becomes our standard.’

• Farzana Baduel with Gemma Moroney: Shaking up creativity [podcast] (11 January) ‘Kent County Council paid for my school year to do this psychometric testing to tell you what career you should have and mine came out with PR, lawyer, and something else I can’t remember now. I’m argumentative.’
• Kirsty Leighton: From Start-Up to Global Success: The Joys and Challenges of Running a Multi-Award-Winning PR Agency (no date) ‘Success isn’t just about the clever campaigns you create — it’s about the team you build. Surrounding yourself with talented, motivated people who believe in your vision is everything.’

Gender, diversity and wellbeing

• Andy Green: The facts about the Blue Monday meme on its 20th anniversary (17 January) ‘It’s that time of year again, ‘Blue Monday’ on January 20th, the third Monday of January, and symbolically the ‘most depressing day of the year’. And I’m a proud parent of the meme, launching the first ‘Blue Monday’ back in 2005 and now celebrating its 20th birthday.’
• Advita Patel: Is DEI dead? 3 powerful strategies inclusive leaders embed DEI into organisational DNA (17 January) ‘What if this is a moment to reimagine and evolve it? To move beyond performative actions and superficial measures? To embed inclusion so deeply into our workplace cultures that it becomes the air we breathe, not a box we tick?’
• Ana Adi with Liz Bridgen: Women in PR [podcast] (13 January) ‘What you’ve got to remember is that public relations can’t be done without people, and a lot of these people - especially at junior levels - are ignored in academic research. But they’re the ones doing that work.’

Public and third sectors

• Joanne Cochrane: Awareness Days – have they had their day? (6 January) ‘Awareness Days won’t go away anytime soon but I think communications teams can show their worth by prompting and challenging colleagues a bit more and encouraging them to make the awareness event relevant for their communities.

Politics and public affairs

• Stuart Thomson: 2025: The Time To Think Long Term in Public Affairs (9 January) ‘The period immediately following the election saw a flurry of announcements, but the real work is now taking place as the government looks to deliver on its manifesto commitments and address pressing policy challenges.’
• Julio Romo: Elon Musk’s Political Alignments: Strategic Moves or Reputational Risk? (7 January) ‘Elon Musk’s political endorsements reflect a complex interplay of personal beliefs, business strategy, and global competition. While these actions may secure short-term benefits in deregulation, tax relief, and incentives, the long-term reputational risks to his companies are slowly growing.’

Reputation, risk and crisis

• Amanda Coleman: Managing the top risk (19 January) ‘The final thoughts on risk is that all of us have a huge risk which is that of complacency. We believe it won’t happen here or that we can’t be affected. It was an attitude in existence as the Covid-19 pandemic was spreading around the world.’
• Kevin Ruck: Why ignoring employees in a crisis can create a double crisis (18 January) ‘The focus in a crisis is understandably media management, but ignoring employees can turn an external crisis into a double crisis by allowing it to negatively impact employee engagement.’

Media, digital and AI

• Andrew Bruce Smith: Why all PR and comms professionals should be using AI reasoning models (27 January) 'Right now, you have 3 key reasoning models to choose from: OpenAI's 01, Google Gemini's 2.0 Flash Thinking and DeepSeek's DeepThink R1.'
• Neville Hobson: 20 Years of FIR: A Podcasting Journey (5 January) ‘One of the most fascinating shifts over the years has been the growing influence of podcasts. Once a niche medium, podcasting has become a platform where news is broken, elections are influenced, and audiences are engaged at a deeply personal level.'

Academic, education and training