• by Jon Crowley , Yesterday

I’m a little concerned that we’re solving the wrong problem as an industry. The vast majority of effort in advertising for the last 20 years has been focused on getting people to convert: to click, to buy, to capture existing demand by driving an audience to action. But in an era without boredom, where every waking moment is filled with distraction, the problem is at the other end of the funnel.

We need to focus on getting people to pay attention. Unless a high percentage of people are actually paying attention to our work, effectiveness, efficiency, meaning, brand love—whatever metric you choose—is unattainable. Attention is the prerequisite, but we treat it as a given, as something you can pay for. We assume people are paying attention just because we put an ad in front of them.

To get an unfair share of attention, we need to admit something that is blasphemy to the strategic discipline. Instead of relying on insights that explain things, we need insights that reframe how we think about things.

The ad industry obsesses over insights to the point where we pretend statistics in a dashboard qualify. But I have yet to see any data that suggests being insightful gets people to pay attention. Arguably, every successful entertainment franchise and media platform suggests the opposite.

What research suggests does attract attention is surprise. Specifically, Bayesian surprise, which measures how much information changes your beliefs—the gap between what you believed before and after exposure. If it makes a small shift, surprise is low. If it makes a large shift, surprise is high.

In neuroscience and machine learning, Bayesian surprise is used to identify where attention goes and what drives learning.

Findings show that areas with high Bayesian surprise are where attention goes. Seventy percent to eighty percent of rapid shifts in visual focus land on areas that generate above-average Bayesian surprise. Which means the recipe for attention isn’t being insightful. It’s information, ideas, imagery that change people’s minds.

So, a strategic approach focused on finding an insight or human truth is less effective than one based on understanding the most likely prior belief, then reframing the product, category, use case, or brand to generate high Bayesian surprise. Strategy should focus on credible ways to challenge existing perceptions.

This means changing how we brief and conceive creative ideas. It means getting teams on board with the idea that great work has to change minds. It means judging creative based on how much it communicates that reframe, in addition to being entertaining and engaging.

Focus on briefs that create this moment. Design a reframe to challenge how people think, spark a creative idea that uses that shift to generate surprise, and get people to pay attention.

The focus is still on effective creative work. We still obsess over the communications plan, optimize campaigns, and sweat execution. We must also realize that spending most of our time optimizing at the end isn’t as effective as optimizing the chances people will pay attention at the beginning.

I spent most of my career obsessing over the insight. Surprisingly, I should have been paying attention to the reframe.