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Shop Talk

Continuous Partial Atten... Oh, wait... Over there...

July 9, 2006

Posted by Phil.Gomes

I've been skipping through the hours of audio I recorded during Edelman's recent General Manager meeting and annual four-day Summer School event.

Futurist Linda Stone spoke to both groups and I was fortunate enough to corner her for an interview. (It'll make its way into an upcoming episode of earSHOT.) Key to Stone's worldview is the concept of "continuous partial attention," or the idea that we we are often forced or accustomed to accepting simultaneous inputs from various sources. (As I write this, I have four IM services, a phone, a mobile phone, a browser, and my email operating.)

"Attention" -- gaining it, keeping it -- continues to be a word on the lips of many. When I took Dr. John Beck's class at Annenberg, he described attention as the scarcest resource. Beck codified these thoughts in The Attention Economy. Beck, it seemed, informed some of Stone's work.

I've lately been reminded of the great advertisement for Marshall guitar amplifiers from several years ago. The sole picture was a grenade. The copy read "Just because something is loud doesn't mean you'll want to listen to it."

People who have listened to my podcasted interviews know that I'm one of the more conservative voices when it comes to new-media adoption and evangelism. Too often, people are seduced by the newness of the tool such that it blinds them to its practical use. That's why I advocate reading Aristotle's Rhetoric -- taking a more radical (def. "to the root of") approach to persuasion.

My point: Gaining attention, though no trivial task by any means, is among the easier challenges facing marketers. Developing sustainable, compelling, and defensible communications is key...

...And it has little to do with tagging, blogs, Web 2.0, podcasts, RSS, AJAX, and so on.

Take an intellectually honest look at your communications objectives before you start throwing tactics up on a wall. Your efforts at gaining attention will be more meaningful and relevant. The PR industry -- and the groups it most wants to influence -- will thank you.

Technorati Tags:
pr, public relations, aristotle, rhetoric

posted by Phil.Gomes

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