Micro Persuasion

For more than 100 years brand marketers have largely focused on push - a mix of tried-and-true tactics that include paid and earned media. However, that was before the Attention Crash, which is changing the economics of digital marketing.

The endless supply of content is taking a toll. It has forced consumers to make hard choices about where and how they spend time. Today people are browsing less and going deeper into a small number of sites. The exact mix of destinations change. What they have in common, however, is that they are all useful.

This habitual shift is resetting the way marketers think. To remain relevant today brands realize they increasingly have to create valuable utilities that consumers pull. These need to seamlessly integrate into the hubs where consumers are investing their shrinking attention.

Kraft, for example, circumvented the Attention Crash with the iFood Assistant, a database of 7,000 recipes that can be accessed from the iPhone. Even though it is clearly Kraft branded and costs 99 cents, the app has remained one of the top paid lifestyle programs on the iTunes store for nearly six months. (Kraft is an Edelman client but we didn't develop this app.)