Micropersuasion

Steve Rubel recently blogged about the growing scarcity of attention, a subject near and dear to my mind and business. http://www.micropersuasion.com/2007/06/the_attention_c.html. My favorite line in the post is “human attention does not obey Moore’s Law,” and it is good to see him back writing about meaningful observations rather than the latest improvement to Twitter.

Our premise at Attention PR is based on identifying opportunities to communicate based on the imbalance between the supply (static) and demand (escalating) of consumer attention.

A person I hold in great esteem recently gave me some research that illustrates how the average human makes 484 friends in his life (Malcolm Gladwell writes in The Tipping Point that a person can maintain 150 at any one time). So, if you want to be a friend, and isn’t that the goal of marketing, whether it is to a brand or another person, you need to capture someone’s attention personally and authentically.

So, the Bell Curve of Web 2.0 ultimately peaks because of limited consumer attention. How many RSS feeds can I manage in a day? How many social network profiles can I actively maintain? As mass media becomes 2.0., then even greater competition forces another winnowing of services, because we just don’t have enough hours in the day.

However, the crueler decision is not to embrace consumer expression and participation which will leave you unable to compete at all. Like the alpine climber on the Price Is Right, you have to start climbing even if it means you fall off the end.