Don’t Take Attention For Granted!

I had an epiphany today that clearly has been stuck in my brain for quite a while, which is that, oh, right, the biggest companies in the world, the biggest advertisers in the world, have been taking attention for granted.

https://www.facebook.com/gary/videos/10155468119398350/

This friction that I’m feeling between the way that I’m marketing against attention and the way that 90% of the market that actually has money is spending against attention is the fact that I don’t take for granted the thing that everybody else is taking for granted, which is very simply the attention itself. 

People believe just because you put a billboard out or you buy a ton of banner ads or pre-rolls or you buy television at scale for millions of dollars and run commercials that you’re getting “attention.”

They’re looking for reach, but they’re also assuming.

When you assume, you lose.

They’re assuming just because they’ve spent millions of dollars across all these platforms that they’re going to get the attention, that people are going to consume their 30 second video or their print ad with their slogan on it.

However, the reality is that in my entire career, because I’ve been 100% consumer-centric and because I realized that advertising is not what we want as human beings, I’ve been reverse engineering not only where their attention actually is, but where they’re actually consuming it, as well as the quality of the message and the creative, which is the variable once you have someone’s attention.

Attention > impressions .. it’s time to go deeper to how things are sold and consumed.

In reality is I know a lot more people are going to watch my videos across all the social platforms than if my video was being played as a 30 second spot, as a PSA, in between one episode of one show that is airing on CNBC. Because even though CNBC sells the amount of reach on viewership against reporting that has been accepted by the market, I know that the actual consumption of that video is quite low.

💩changes … pay attention pic.twitter.com/cpg7FXJSDb

— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) January 8, 2017

What I’ve come to realize is that the biggest advertisers in the world are taking something for granted. The attention itself. They are trading on the perceived or potential reach of their message without quantifying that it’s 2017, and that the mobile phone owns consumer attention, and everything is harder in marketing than it’s ever been.

The quality of how you strategize who you get in front of and what you put in front of them, whether through voice, or a mobile video, or anything else is imperative.

And I’m terribly sorry for the biggest advertisers in the world wasting all their money because they’re taking the consumer’s attention for granted.

The last thing I want to say is all of you give me so much credit for engaging and listening and being with you, but the truth is, you give me so much more because you’re the punchline! 

I am am and always have been consumer focused. The reason I don’t pay attention to my “competition” is not because I’m brash or cool.. It’s because it doesn’t matter when you’re obsessed with the end consumer.

Give them your time and attention. Why do you think I’m asking you in my vlogs what kind of content work?

Because I need to give you what you want. I’m playing in the realm that’s going to work for you. Everybody talks about, well, if you listen to consumer this… If you talk to consumers then that..

Yes of course.

Because it starts and it ends with the end consumer and where the attention actually is. 

I will always do actions that bring you the most value because then I get value in return.

51/49. That’s the entire game.

Till the end.

Find the attention, bring value, and then everything else clicks. 

Thanks for reading! 🙂 If you enjoyed this article,

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