Thursday 13 December 2012

Moving from an attention economy to an intention economy

There was a time not so long ago, marketers were busy devising ways to 'buy' their consumer's attention.  'Time' they said was the currency. After all, in a busy world why would you 'spend' your precious time with a brand if it did not give you back something you valued. Pretty much the same way you will not open your wallet for something which you did not see of much use. This, we the marketers termed as 'attention economy'.

But world has moved on and consumers have gotten smarter. Time has gotten more precious and no matter what, they are protective about time and are conscious about what they spend it on. If we are to go about the increasing searches on google and status updates, one thing that is proved is that consumers are happy to spend their time on their 'intentions'. They are happy to search for the dream holiday, the dream house, weight loss, face list and what have you.

Thanks to social media, the intentions are all over - as status updates, as pictures of a perfect evening at their favourite coffee shop, choice of holiday and so on and so forth. This truly is the golden goose.   Consumers themselves are advertising what they are after and brands are reading into it only to plug themselves in in every possible way. If my status update reads that I went for a 5 km run, I will be bombarded with popular running shoe brand's ads in every digital media I consume. Soon, if I put my dream house on Facebook, some loan provider will ensure they let me know the best deals on home loans on every media I consume. This is what I call the 'intention' economy.

Every expressed intention will be an opportunity for a marketer to bombard the consumer with a specific and highly targeted communication putting forth their best salesmanship in print.

So next time you do express your intention, watch over your shoulder. The big brother is indeed watching.


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