THE ATTENTION MERCHANTS

*The epic scramble to get inside our heads*

Author: Tim Wu

Publisher: Knopf

Year: 2016

Comments: According to Wu, “the industrialisation of human attention capture” has its origins during the First World War with efforts to recruit more soldiers to fight. Advertising then took this publicly financed innovation and repurposed it for profit. A powerful group of commercial propagandists emerged, particularly in the US. These “attention merchants” not only enriched themselves but also performed a critical economic function, helping to deal with the West’s excess productive capacity by boosting demand.

Wu’s book tells the story of this conquest, recording the extraordinarily successful attempts by advertisers to occupy more and more of our attention over the past 100 years. It is less a history of advertising than of how this enclosure happened: the technologies, platforms and formats that have made it possible for media to penetrate an ever-growing portion of our waking lives.

Wu’s book isn’t just a history. It’s a polemic. The reason we need to understand where the attention industry comes from, he believes, is because it poses a mortal threat to human happiness and flourishing. It does this by inhibiting good attention, and encouraging bad attention. Good attention is “deep, long-lasting and voluntary” – the kind we get from reading a book. Bad attention is “quick, superficial and often involuntarily provoked” – the kind we get from checking our Twitter mentions. Good attention is the spiritual space needed for self-realisation. Bad attention makes us stupider, more susceptible to advertising and “less ourselves”.

Every media innovation since the invention of writing has triggered a moral panic about whether the human experience would be hopelessly corrupted as a result. Is it different this time ?

FRICTION

*Passion brands in the age of disruption*

Authors: Jeff Rosenblum and Jordan Berg

Publisher: Powerhouse Books

Year: 2017

Comments: How can brands stand out and build loyalty in an age where consumers are bombarded with marketing messages every moment of the day?

The answer, according to the authors Jeff Rosenblum and Jordan Berg, founders of Questus agency, is ti fight friction. “Friction is everything that gets in the way of what people want to accomplish in life. It’s the big things that prevent us from being what we want to be. It’s the little things that prevent from doing what we want to do. Fighting friction is about improving people’s lives in authentic, meaningful ways”. The book provides a system for embracing transparency, engaging audiences, creating evangelists, and unleashing unprecedented growth.