Attention scarcity
John Hagel, the (increasingly) well-known strategy consultant and author of The Only Sustainable Edge writes in his blog:
As I have written before, today’s large media conglomerates emerged in an environment of scarce distribution. Scale and scope mattered in negotiations with distribution channels. Distribution scarcity is rapidly eroding and being replaced by attention scarcity. As these changes play out, if media companies want to maintain scale and scope, they will need to build relationships with specific audience segments (and use the Internet to build relationships with individual members of the audience segments). They will then need to develop the skills required to use the deep understanding of these audience members to become ever more helpful in connecting them with content (and other relationships) regardless of who produced the content. The mindset shift required to do this should not be under-estimated.
And commenting on TimeWarner and the media industry generally:
The earlier wave of M&A was largely driven by an assumption that physical distribution channels (e.g., broadcast or cable channels and movie theaters) were the key bottleneck in the media business. If you didn’t own your own distribution channels or build sufficient scale to achieve greater negotiating power with distribution channels, the thinking went, your content businesses would be at a permanent disadvantage. The growth of the Internet challenges this assumption at its core.
As the bandwidth of Internet connections, both wireline and wireless, steadily increases, physical distribution constraints erode rapidly. But media companies face a different challenge and opportunity that could provide a basis for restructuring the media business. We are seeing content proliferate and a new bottleneck emerging: our attention. We each have only 24 hours of attention each day – no amount of technology innovation will change that basic fact of life. How we choose to allocate that attention among a growing array of options competing for our attention will determine who creates value and who destroys value. I have posted about the significance of this development in transforming brands.
So what? Replace media with financial services. That’s what. Ok, the analogy is not perfect but if you are a regular reader of the Park Paradigm, with a small mental leap I hope you can see where I’m going with this. Hagel’s focus on attention, customer-centric brands, and collaboration marketing resonates enormously with me and – although he is coming at it from a very different perspective – neatly articulates the opportunities that will characterize the capital markets for the digital generation. And so, mashing up Hagel with Park gets you:
Today’s large financial conglomerates emerged in an environment of scarce distribution. Scale and scope mattered in negotiations with distribution channels; even better was to own the channels. Distribution scarcity is rapidly eroding and being replaced by attention scarcity. As these changes play out, if financial sevices companies want to maintain scale and scope, they will need to build relationships with specific customer segments (and use the Internet to build relationships with individual members of the customer segments). They will then need to develop the skills required to use the deep understanding of these customers to become ever more helpful in connecting them with products (and other relationships) regardless of who produced the products. The mindset shift required to do this should not be under-estimated.
Be the conduit. The facilitator. The path of least resistance. The products ultimately all become commodities in the sense that they can be sourced. What will make your customer pick you out of the crowd? What do you need to do to capture her attention? Small is the new big. (Thanks Seth for that modern classic.)
(The post that got me off on this particular tangent.)
Interested in the emerging market for attention? You could do worse than starting here: Joshua Porter on Attention Trust; and Root.net.
