Winning the fight for attention

Over lunch last week, a senior FTSE 100 in-house communications professional asked...?

“What does the communications team of the future look like?”?

It sparked a brilliant chat and a whole bunch of thoughts from both of us around audiences, measurement, creativity, relationships, and competencies for both clients and agencies.?

One of the concepts we talked about was the idea of assumed attention – that there can be an underlying perception in corporate communications that we don’t have to work as hard to capture and retain our audience’s interest compared to our B2C friends.?

Winning the fight for attention is the foundation of effective communications. It is a prerequisite for building awareness, changing a perception, or driving a new or different behaviour.

That could include launching a new corporate narrative; tackling a brand perception issue; connecting a performance story with your financial stakeholders; attracting the next generation of talent into your organisation; sharing your ESG commitments with the world; engaging employees on a material risk such as cyber security; or even wanting higher participation with your channels – winning attention is a non-negotiable element for all of them.?

But today, attention is in short supply. Entire business models have turned attention into a commodity. People are bombarded with more notifications, messages, and content than ever before –?all of it designed to hijack their attention. It has become so scarce?and valuable that we need to throw out any assumptions about audience attention that we might have.??

The good news is there are things you can do to help tip the odds in your favour.?

1. Creativity that connects?

People live in a world of nearly infinite choice on where they spend their time. Creativity is your secret weapon in cutting through all that noise. As communicators, we have access to some of the most inspiring creative thinkers and creators, so our ability to create thumb-stopping, attention-grabbing content is unlimited. Bold creative ideas, applied with impact visually, verbally, and through motion can attract even the most distracted individuals and build a more emotional connection with your story.?

2. The right experience?

Stakeholders are people too. Their expectations around access to information and ease of use have been reset by the Google, Amazon, and Netflix’s of this world. We need to ensure that we create messages, content, and channels that exceed audience expectations if we want to retain their ongoing attention.?

3. Audience insight?

Your ability to connect the right person, with the right message, at the right time, needs to be driven by a deep understanding?of your audiences. Too often we rely on our experience or broad market research to underpin audience insight. Creating opportunities where you and your team can regularly meet your stakeholders face-to-face always adds value and helps to validate or challenge any existing perceptions you might have about them.?

It was an incredibly interesting lunch and one that sparked a lot of great thoughts.

As always, if you would like to discuss attention, the communication team of the future, or any other issue however big or small, please do not hesitate to get in touch.??