Beyond Social

The Post-Attention Economy: Marketing in a World That Won’t Sit Still

• Vista Social • Episode 30

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Are we marketing in a post-attention world?


In this episode of Beyond Social, the Vista Social team dives headfirst into the seismic shift in how we consume, and create, content. From the shortening attention spans to the rise of short-form video and viral memes, this conversation unpacks why the traditional marketing playbook no longer cuts it.


What does it take to cut through the noise when people are skipping, scrolling, and multitasking faster than ever? The team shares thought-provoking insights on the democratization of influence, the decline of deep reading, and how algorithms shape our views, and wardrobes. With an eye on the future, they discuss how polarization isn’t just shaping politics, it’s driving marketing strategies, too.


Prepare to challenge your assumptions about connection in the digital age and walk away with fresh strategies for building authentic engagement in a world where every second counts.


Tune in and rethink how to truly speak your audience’s language!



That's true. You're only gonna hit your audience and get them to actually understand your product, your service, what you stand for, what you believe in, if you can speak their language. Yeah. So in today's world, when we think of marketing products, products that have features, products that have certain explanation, right, to these features. The difficulty of marketing that is because the world is now consuming information in ways that is almost unable to absorb or digest information that is informational. So, in order to, and if you notice, some of the bigger brands are no longer, sort of brandishing their features. They have Instagram profiles full of short clips on fun things, memes, um, with an idea being that that's how people are consuming content. And I think we've been facing, you know, some of those challenges as well. I mean, even the most best intentioned post, right, may not get that. So, I recently read an article, um, in Atlantic around how college students entering college, um, how professors, notice that college students can't handle reading assignments. And upon some research, these professors, um, in the article, they got together and it turned out that it wasn't just like a one off situation at Columbia or one off situation at Harvard where this was an issue, this was a systemic issue, right? And they looked into it, turned out that the, turns out that the middle school, starting in the middle school, the reading volume has dropped so significantly that by the time they reach, um, college, they just physically cannot handle reading assignments. So I wonder, right, if this is just sort of like this overall trend of not being able to sit down and focus in consuming the information, um, and how you have to think of when you produce content that your content will be watched at like times and a half the speed while being on another device. And God forbid you take more than, you know, 15, 20, 30 seconds of somebody's time to focus and concentrate. Is that the world we are in? I mean, short form content, the whole premise of, of you've got five seconds to get someone's attention. You don't have a strong hook. And they're leaving after three, four seconds, that sort of thing. I mean, that, that reiterates that whole thing that like the attention span and maybe even how attractive, how crazy that hook or that intro needs to be. Like it kind of ties into that, right? Cause if I'm consuming content at such a quick pace of short content, short content, short content, how do I read a 3000 page book, a thousand page book, 500 page book? Do you find yourself scrolling through shorts on YouTube often? Okay, so, I wonder if my experience will resonate with you or not. I don't do it often, uh, but listen, on occasion, I don't even know why I do it, but I guess it's because I have a phone and there's nothing to do for a few seconds, I just scroll through it, and one observation that I make is that I get irritated after doing it for a while because the content is not long enough. So let's say I come across like a clip that I do like, let's say it's like a, a clip from a movie or something. And there's only like, what, 30 seconds of it there. Yeah. And it gets interesting, right? And then right when it becomes more interesting, it ends to go to the other clip, which is not only not interesting, it's completely on a different thing, right? So, so, and then, and then I go to the next one, then I go to the next one, and then finally I get to another clip that I like, only to get sort of this dissatisfaction that it ended prematurely, to be thrown to yet another irrelevant piece of content. I don't know. Have you ever felt that way? I, I, yeah. I hear what you're saying. I do consume a lot of content on YouTube Shorts, and I think once YouTube rolled out the feature where you can link to a longer form content in the bottom of the short, I've seen my frustration decrease, honestly, because, I mean, I'm in social, I'm in support, I'm in a lot of different things, but I like to watch science content, tech news, that sort of stuff. And a lot of that, you'll see channels create, you know, 20, 30, 40 minute long videos. That I might not be interested in the whole thing, I'll be honest. I may not want to watch 40 minutes of this, but if that 60 second, that 30 second short isn't interesting enough, I've definitely found myself clicking on to the longer one and watching the full thing. How often do you find yourself skipping through a video on Netflix. On Netflix? Oh, whatever, like you've ordered a movie or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, do you find it? Like I watch the trailer and read the description and as long as it's matched. What month are you watching it? You watching it? I'm in, I'm in. Once I've clicked play and I've watched longer than 30 seconds, I'm committed. I don't think I've ever played a movie in the last year where I didn't watch it through. I don't know. Sometimes I find myself, and again, this is just, it speaks volumes about the world we are living in and what the world is sort of doing to us, right? Is that I, I looked at the medium, maybe there is some scene in the movie that is very sort of long and I don't know, non essential to the plot or something, or I deem to be non essential to the plot. I actually find myself skipping through that thing to get to the next more interesting. And that is so scary to me that I just don't have. So I've read somewhere that people are afraid to be bored, basically. That we become afraid to kind of have, to be with ourselves. Be without, without mind sort of just wandering, uh, endlessly with thoughts and whatnot. So as, as I, as I'm running or as I'm exercising, right? Um, I personally don't run music because I like this time to just think about stuff. Uh, but not only, but I think even if you do turn on music, I think you're still kind of like with the thoughts, right? Because music is more of a background type thing. But I think a lot of people use the time while they're on the bike, or they're running to do podcasts, to throw more information in their head. So, but if that's the case, when is the time to contemplate? When is the time to really make decisions then? So, the time is then shortened. So, I think it just goes to the shortness of the opinions. And nowadays, with let's say politics, right? Um, or with the, sort of the election just wrapping up, you have one side of the spectrum producing galvanizing messaging that is very short, curt, very cut, oftentimes not very complete. Going after the emotional and sentimental kind of values versus the other side is continuing with the thoughtful, agree or disagree, I'm not at all suggesting that one side is sort of more right than the other, but it's just different format, right? One side is very, uh, very galvanizing, very short. Meaning, it's a lot of the speeches are comprised of very short sort of pings almost, right? And they're oftentimes not even complete. And the other side is still trying to go in and create, you know, five minute speeches on certain political or economical, you know, issue. Not only is that not galvanizing, right, uh, but also, is there even anybody consuming that on the other side? So, I find the shortness of messaging on the side that does galvanize, and I speak to people sometimes and I'm like, Do you understand the message here? Because I don't. Sometimes, like, you know, if I watch that, I just don't understand the message. And I kind of do, and I can deduce, I can kind of connect the dots, but that's what, so that shortness of messaging, that's what it forces me to do. It's to sort of connect the dots, right, or assume that that's kind of what that person said. Uh, but it's certainly flashy if you're throwing some adjectives in there or some, some this, some that. It sounds very flashy. And then the other side, by comparison, is still trying to appeal to, Sort of very standard way of consuming information. So perhaps like, uh, reading a book versus being on TikTok. And yes, the book has the knowledge and the book has all the details, right? But it's the TikTok that people are in. I don't know if you know, but there are plenty of stats on. The fact that people generally started to read less books just because you know everybody is on social media But the amount of information than they read is vastly larger. Wow. So the books aren't the medium, the messages on social are the medium. So, meaning that we read so much more in a different format, right? So, but I guess that's neither here nor there, like your preferences could be or whatever, right? But if you are out there as a politician, or as a product owner, or as, you know, as anybody else, trying to get a message across You have to consider that that's the new reality. Yeah, that's true. You're only going to hit your audience and get them to actually understand your product, your service, what you stand for, what you believe in, if you can speak their language. And that's the reality. The language of today seems to be short form, catchy, thought provoking content. Whether it's polarizing or not, I mean, it's just got to be, it's got to be packaged in the way that. But look at all of our conversations, even let's say on the personal branding sites that we have with people. Anytime you ask them, at which point, I don't know, did you achieve success with your social content? And almost all of them say that, well, that was the point when something went viral. And why did it go viral? Well, because there was something controversial in there. So, content doesn't go like, and, and, and I think, um, in a lot of the conversation, the person says, listen, you know, we, I looked at the other people's content and it's so much better. It's so much more thoughtful and it's getting no traction. It's getting no likes, right? Versus, you know, I post something outrageous and all of a sudden I get like, you know. It goes viral. So it's, it's the, it's this competition for the minds of, of, of people, right? Where if before it was a handful of newspapers, a handful of, uh, news outlets in the evening news, right? So today it's everybody versus everybody, right? Everybody is a news anchor. Everybody is a deliverer of truth. Right? And as a result, who has the patience for a, as this Atlantic article, it's like a five page article. You know, who, who has the time to consume that? I don't know how the magazine does, you know, business wise. Demographics too, right? Yeah. So like, but I'm not sure, like, is there, is there a future where we're going to have newspapers and, and magazines? I mean, the fact that you're picking up a newspaper in the airplane and reading, like, that's impressive to me. Right. But the Wi Fi is already there, so it's just a matter of time before that goes, the need for that goes away, right? Yeah, that's true. The only thing I read on an airplane is the menu, usually. Not even the, what is it, the instruction, emergency instructions. Right. But that's a, so, so it almost sounds like polarization as a strategy is kind of what we're geared towards. Polarization or maybe galvanization, right? So, like, people are just so overexcited about certain topics, right? And they're so, um, I think the, the emphasis is oftentimes on things that, and again, we are kind of having this conversation from the standpoint of us being a product or anybody needing to kind of deliver a message to be understood, right? So if you are delivering a very thoughtful message on a very specific product or an idea, and even if you manage to make all the right arguments, you will most likely fail in today's world. And I think that is not something that was the fact of life 20, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago, right? Um, somehow, by the way, I've heard 2017 somewhere as being like the pivotal point and I, 2016 to be like the pivotal point of polarization of the society. Like the fact that we've become so agitated by ideas, maybe, and our views have become so polarized. And as I was thinking about what could have happened back then, um, residential election on one hand, maybe, um, but it also could have been like this perfect storm, right? So 2017 and 16, this is 8 years into social networks in a big way. I'm not counting Myspace or the Friendsters, right? So I'm thinking of Facebook, right? 8 years into it. The algorithms are, at that point, probably a few years running. Algorithms, I mean, the ones that recommend content, right? And the recommended content is always aligning with what you really like, with what your friends are really liking, right? It's not something that existed before. Right. Right, so before, listen, I could have heard an anecdote from a, from, from a friend at a dinner once a week or a story, right? But in between that and, and the next time seeing that friend, I would have had a bunch of other experiences, whereas now him and me will have an identical experience, simply because the algorithms are feeding us the same thing, right? And, um, and our view of the world will not only be aligned. But it will also be probably fairly extreme because we're being fed the same, like, if you are into, I don't know, some extreme politics, you'll be fed that same notions, like, if you're fearful of something, right, you'll be fed the same ideas and your fear will only worsen. So not only does that reinforce my, perhaps, incorrect beliefs, but the number of people that are now sharing these beliefs is now steadily increasing. So you have like less variety of opinion, right? So effectively, it's a very sort of interesting dynamic. I guess as I'm now talking about this, I wonder if, if that also means that we all will wear the same clothes and, and buy the same products. I'm not sure if that's true. I mean, we're certainly all going to buy from Temu sooner or later. Temu, whatever they call it. Cause I mean the amount of ads, right? But that's a good point. We're all fed the same thing. Um, very similar ideas, very similar concepts than the products certainly to follow. Right. Cause they're going to serve an ad based on a profile. Right. And if someone's selling a specific color shoe that day, At that moment and 15 other people who have similar profiles and you just saw it. I mean, we can get there. We can get there. I mean, that's, I think there's a reason why everybody down the street, like half of the people you go through the airport nowadays, you see with the AirPods versus what the 1500 other types of airpods. Headphone brands that are out there. Yeah, the certain brands have certainly won over people in a more meaningful way. And I guess it's an interesting point, because I guess the question is, is it easier or harder, right, to compete on ideas these days? On one hand, it's more difficult, right? Because people are entrenched into certain ideas. And again, uh, idea is a very broad term, right? Political ideas, product ideas, habits, you know, whatever. But at the same time, there is also this significant degree of, um, uh, democratization of ability, right? All of a sudden, a small brand can easily penetrate the market with the simple use of proper influencers. And if you can buy influencers, you can become influencers, which democratizes the environment even further. As we talk about, like, you can build your own brand. And once you get the brand, you get the brand deals, like, you know, it's, it's interesting, right? So on one hand, it causes sort of worsening of, uh, attitudes and worsening of opinions and entrenching people into them. But at the same time, it made it that much easier to introduce the new ones. Because, listen, anybody can figure out how to become an influencer on LinkedIn or Instagram, reaching like a million followers. And like the story that we just heard about the athlete or the personal trainer, you know, yeah. So first year in jail, three years later, you're a millionaire, right? Just because, you know, it's very democratized. Like you can, you can be that influencer, you can, you can, you can reach that. So it's interesting, right? So it may be that sort of is the inevitable nature of progress is that progress will sort of, uh, destroy or damage all their ways of doing things and introduce the nuance. Right? How's it been? But at least from, again, from, from the product, uh, sort of, uh, from the marketing perspective, purely from the marketing perspective, I think the world is an exciting place. Yeah. And it's evolving. And I think that's kind of full circle there where you can't expect to communicate or market it. Same way that you are today, let's say 10 years from now, you can't expect the same strategies that worked 10 years ago. So why would you communicate, right? Like we have to adapt. We have to evolve with our strategies of marketing, just like communication. Yeah. If our audience no longer listens to 45 minute long podcasts, then we are at 19, by the way. These are probably going to be shorts. It's probably not even going to be a full episode. It's going to be short. You're right, but I think that, imagine if a marketer 20 years ago was asked to create a marketing campaign, uh, on a budget that competed with some large product, it would be impossible. Yeah. Because basically you would have to buy a billboard or you'll have to, I don't know, uh, buy ad space on TV, millions of dollars, right? Today, not a problem. Like you can be as small as you want and you will compete and you will actually succeed. If the other side doesn't, you know, watching carefully, you know, you can easily develop a very successful business and successful marketing execution, possibly even without any budget, right? I mean, listen, the organic is still kind of very, very powerful if done right. Um, so again, I think the world has definitely changed, but for the marketers and that sort of is, um, for whom we are building our products, I think the world has become just so much more exciting.