When Microsoft research(1) concluded we have less attention span than goldfish due to use of portable devices, I smelled something fishy. After I got over the imagined test of a buttery, pan-fried filet of my soul, I had a squirrel race through my mind on its voracious search for nuts. I thought about chestnuts roasting on an open fire. I wondered what a closed fire looked like. Then I thought about the article again. I get distracted that way.
Look at one kid drooling into his smartphone screen and ask yourself if the beauty and creativity of your product, your message, and your “sell” is attuned to a majority of the population who now lives the dream of Homer Simpson, who once said, “Five seconds, but I want it now!”
Bullet points, 140 character tweets, emojis. LOLs. We are devolving to binary code for communications. Combine that with a bit of neuroscience research that confirms that we make snap judgements about first impression(2), and that first impression really counts. You have 50 milliseconds (0.05 seconds) to make a favourable impression with your website(3). All that time you invest in the image choice, the tagline, text placement, and overall symmetry and balance of visual output associated with communications, boils down to a snap of a finger impression that determines whether you fly like an eagle or wedge out dirt like an earthworm. And that impression flavours the entire buying cycle, and word of mouth scuttlebutt that drives everything from tourism visitation to investment.
Our always on, need it now society makes the “seriousness” of our ability to sell our communities a tough row to hoe. Heck – who has time to hoe a row? There must be an app for that.
In 2015, the Town of Okotoks (the town I live in) encountered headwinds with a “there are a number of things to do in Okotoks” tagline on Calgary light rail transit cars. The statement was attached to a larger “Let Your Summer Unfold” ad on LRT trains in Calgary, but the statement was placed next to the Town’s logo, which gets interpreted as a tagline. An early social media post wondered if it might be the “saddest tagline in history.” Social media also continued to light up, aided by a Town administration that was quick to steer in the direction of light-hearted fun. There was Canada-wide media coverage. There were memes, including the “Dos Equis guy” who extolled: “I don’t always go to Okotoks, but when I do I do a number of things.” The hashtag #thingstodoinOkotoks took off on Twitter, within a few weeks recording 187,000 impressions, and a 267% increase in Impressions, 412% increase in Likes and 312% increase in Shares on the Town’s Facebook page. Awards followed.
So is all of this a good thing or a bad thing? Well in the world of marketing both unaided and aided recall of a name is a way to measure traction with a consumer group. On the other hand, you want someone to recall you in the context of who you are and why you matter as a community. Okotoks has a solid history of innovative achievement and progressive leadership and management. I think the initial tagline trip-up didn’t match the community’s pride in its track record, but the inventiveness of the Town’s management of initial social media reaction did. The more guerilla marketing unfolding of events clearly attracted attention that a “sophisticated” campaign could have never hoped to achieve.
More broadly, I think the world has caught a cold called “the Kardashian effect”. We have become a world of me-now, simplistic selfies and instant gratification. To move with the trend suggests dumbing our communications down to lowest common denominators.
Elevating conversation is hard because it challenges people to think, consider, reflect, then act. Thinking translated to purposeful action takes time in a world of eight second bull ride attention spans.
To fit into this brave new world requires grappling with the “Simple Paradox.” While we need to grab attention and more quickly connect with people superficially, we need to be able to transition the lure to a community working hard on enabling life lived spectacularly well (i.e. its “product”).
Do you want to eat Lucky Charms, or Shredded Wheat? Of course we want the Lucky Charms if there are no ramifications. They are magically delicious. But we get short term buzz and a long term hole in our soul and a diabetic condition. Shredded Wheat is a harder choice and path. So love the Lucky Charms, but make sure you are quickly moving beyond to talk loudly about your Shredded Wheat that has a deeper community development purpose in mind.
(1)http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadians-now-have-shorter-attention-span-than-goldfish-thanks-to-portable-devices-microsoft-study. Reported by the National Post.
(2)Research shows first impressions really count – http://www.theguardian.com/science/2006/aug/23/usnews.internationalnews
(3)http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01449290500330448#.Vg7745ddc3A