Attention Is Your Biggest Cost in Marketing

Our brain only attends to 5% of the information it receives from all available senses. That's right, 5%. Think about the challenging implications involved in leveraging a marketing campaign or increasing sales when everyone is vying for that small percentage and trying to make the cut.

mobileYouth recently wrote about the neurological concept of gating, a mechanism that enables our brains to function, when tied to youth marketing. Thus the statement, "attention is your biggest cost." Makes sense. Marketing is directly tied to gating, the "neurological tool for blocking out information such as pain, sensation etc. to avoid overload." Blocking 95% of products and brand messaging seems daunting to any marketer, however, it doesn't have to be.

Take a look at this attention awareness test and consider its implications for youth marketing:

Fascinating, isn't it? Who saw the 'moonwalking bear' the first time they watched it? I didn't. Then I watched it a second time and it was clear as day.

With that being said, I will echo mobileYouth's simple declaration: be relevant. "Less is more and relevance paramount," because youth gates the products that stand out to them.

Morale of the story: "Your youth brand may be a moonwalking bear but unless you’re the team in white, you may as well forget it."