Five Simple Truths of Consumer Attention

Lockdown Learnings #7

As lockdown lifts, it’s time to make your advertising more effective.

Here are Five Simple Truths of Consumer Attention, to keep in mind as your customers’ minds understandably start to wander, and become happily preoccupied with summer plans.

Does anyone fancy a pint? ‘Course you do.

Lockdown is lifting on the 4th of July. Pubs, restaurants, cinemas, galleries, hotels, hairdressers and a host of other hospitality havens will reopen. Normal life is now on the horizon. And everyone’s excited and busy making plans.

At the beginning of the pandemic, as Accenture reported, attention to media and advertising was at a much higher rate than normal. There were fewer distractions, and the public was on a higher state of alert. And during this time brands either went quiet, or correctly changed gears into empathy, altruism, and brand-building.

Now that normality is on its way back (well, sort of) brands and advertisers can now get back to business as usual. But business, as usual, means your audience isn’t really listening; instead it’s asking its friends when they want to meet up next. So here are some simple attentional lessons that might help you get the most out of your marketing, while your audience is busy making other plans.  

These insights are inspired by Professor Karen Nelson-Field, CEO of Amplified Intelligence.

Five simple truths

#1 The audience’s attention is not as focused as marketers think

People tune in and out of ads if they watch them at all. So the brand has to be clear throughout. 

#2 Having someone’s attention is just the start

It doesn’t mean they’ll buy, it just nudges the possibility. A clear and motivating message that’s relevant to them, and repeated to them, is what leads to brands choice.

#3 Advertising does not persuade, it promotes

It’s publicity, that reminds a passive audience that you’re there, if or when they want you. It’s only if they’re interested in what you offer that they can be persuaded at a next step.

#4 Once you get someone’s attention you have to teach them something simple

Seeing isn’t believing. Ads need to teach what a brand is about and reinforce key elements. Otherwise, the viewer won’t learn and remember the basics of the brand.

#5 Low attention background advertising works, and compliments longer formats

Passive ads do a good job. People subconsciously register these brands and are more likely to buy them. Those Coke billboards everywhere that you don’t really see, they lead to sales.

We are inundated with stimuli every day, and to avoid overwhelm we filter most things out, and allocate just enough attention to what we have to do, or want to do. Our attention is constantly going in and out of the things around us. It’s not sustained. It’s not undivided. And advertisers are lucky to get a second, or a few seconds, of our attention.

If we accept that, it shows we shouldn’t build complicated long narrative 30 second TV adverts, but instead aim for singular, clear, and lasting information.

Unexpected creative captures attention and is an important trigger to make someone look up, and pay attention (from GoCompare to a drumming gorilla). And emotion is another important trigger to draw viewers in – especially comedy or empathy (from Sergei the meerkat making us smile, to soundtracks with minor notes used for charity appeals). These approaches can grab or gently nudge our attention. But that alone doesn’t mean the viewer will fully focus, learn something new, and be motivated to act. In other words, attention does not lead to a behavioural outcome.

In fact, most brands fail to link the brand to the advert at all.

Advertising’s job is to nudge propensity towards a brand.

It’s publicity, rather than persuasion. Advertising builds memory structures so that the brand will come to mind when the buyer is in the market. It’s about leaving an imprint of the brand in the mind of consumers, that they might recall if they need or want what you have to offer at some point.

As such, advertising has to teach the viewer the basics of the brand. Rather than tell a full story, it needs to reinforce the brand name, logo, colours, and what it offers. You need to teach the audience about who you are, and what you offer.

This varies for brands that are more or less well known. Apple, Nike, Guinness, are well-known brands, so have to teach less. But even Apple uses absolute simplicity, a visual approach that no one else uses so that in less than a second, we know that it’s an Apple advert. And newer or lesser-known brands, therefore, have to work more, to be remembered for anything at all.

For best results, the brand needs to be visible or clear throughout the advert, and the message simple, with something unexpected and emotional, used to draw the viewer in. 

A great example is Geico’s Cannes Lion advert, The Unskippable Family, that creates the unexpected by showing a family frozen at dinner (as if in freeze-frame), while their dog comes along and slowly eats all of their dinners as they hold their frozen poses. This funny creative is enough to draw us in, and during the entire advert, the Geico logo is present and begins with a simple message that Geico can save you money on your insurance. It’s clear, and with the logo left to linger in front of a comic backdrop, the audience can’t help but watch. The perfect ingredients to capture attention, and teach the viewer about the brand.

Finally, low attention advertising does work. Even when we don’t notice, we do notice. As people are far more likely to buy brands and products that they subconsciously register within their daily life, than if they hadn’t seen them. They don’t have ad-recall, but they do buy. Those Out Of Home billboards and digital display ads do work. And if we use a combination of channels and touchpoints, then we create the most synergy to catch our audience’s attention and reinforce the brand, and what it’s about, at different steps, for them to become disposed to us, consider us, and hopefully choose us.

So what does this mean for tech brands? Well, it means that with things back to normal, your brand might not be the first thing on your customers’ minds. But if you create a fine balance of marketing across channels, with enough creative differentiation to grab attention and set you apart, along with a message that is clear and simple, and repeated enough, that when they’re ready, and when they need you, you’ll be first in mind.

Combine clarity, creativity, and consistency, and your customers will keep you in mind.