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šThe battle for attention is brutal & I've got proof


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šThe battle for attention is brutal & I've got proof
Happy Independence Day, Inbox Hackers. Enjoy the time off. Hopefully youāre reading this by the pool or lake.
Todayās Main Thing gives you a terrifying account of how hard you have to try these days to get the attention of your audience. I witnessed it first-hand last week. Then, you can nibble on This Weekās Marketing Wrap-Upā lots of short videos included.
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The Main Thing
2025ās ZERO Attention World
Little boy runs toward a busy street a week ago today. Guess how many of the seven adults nearby noticed?
ZERO.
Thatās how bad itās gotten. People, including me, do not pay attention.
Iāll back up a little.
Took my Labrador, Chase, to the vet for a laser treatment (great for pain relief).
Weāre waiting in the lobby, and I see the first sign of the attention apocalypse.
An older lady with her tiny dog is staring at her phone. Totally ignores the vet tech asking for āClaire.ā
Vet tech sees no takers, so she walks away. Returns to call for āClaireā again. No takers. She then walks up to the older woman and says, āARE YOU CLAIRE?ā
The woman finally looks up, all startled. She is, in fact, Claire. But oblivious to whatās going on around her.
Blame the phone in that case. Not a Gen Zer. This lady was close to Boomer-age.
So, I sit there mentally wagging my finger at her. Five minutes later, Iām just like her.
Another woman comes in.
Sheās picking up a chihuahua-looking dog. Has a little boy with her. Looked about 4 years old.
Heās never been disciplined even once, from the way he ran all over the lobby. Crashed into a glass shelf at one point. Ran into a couple of exam rooms and behind the front desk employees.
Pitiful parenting on display, as I wait for my dog to return from the back room.
Next thing I know, the kidās mom panics. Yells for the boy. The little hellion is gone!
She runs toward the lobby door. I snap out of my stupor and run behind her. The streetās only about 20 feet from the front door!
Terrible drivers in this town too. No way theyād ever see this two-foot-tall child.
Thank God, the mom grabbed the boy at the sidewalk. Three feet from the road.
Disaster averted. Credit to the Man Upstairs, because we seven humans failed miserably.
Yeah, the mom is ultimately responsible. Her kid. She might wanna tell him (for the first time) to act right.
But, itās amazing none of us in the lobby noticed the kid run outside.
Iād even been eyeballing him because he showed signs of hellionism when he entered the building. Didnāt want him running up and hopping on my dogās back!
I lost track of him, though. Got distracted. Not by my phone, either. But my attention was not where it should be - on my surroundings.
Two lessons here that show human attention is at a historic low:
#1 People hate waiting at the vet. Yet, the lady named āClaireā could not be bothered to pay attention to her name being called, so her pup could be seen.
#2 A child could have easily been killed by a 2,000-pound Cadillac because nobody noticed him running out the door to a busy street.
Both things prove my point about attention going extinct.
Claire loves her dog and hates waiting. But lacking attention trumped those facts.
Hellionās mom loves her kid (despite zero parenting prowess), but didnāt notice him missing for 20 seconds.
The rest of us there? The two front desk workers were working. Understandable. Their attention was where it should've been.
But I canāt excuse my lack of attention or the others in the lobby.
The ability to pay attention is truly eroding to unbelievable lows. In America, at least. Canāt speak for other land masses.
All that to sayā¦
If you think youāre doing enough to make people aware your brand exists, think again.
Your audience is distracted, busy, absorbed in their own world. Just like me and the other folks in that veterinarian lobby.
So, rethink how hard it is to grab someoneās attention in 2025.
Worse? Consider how hard it is to get people to take action in 2025. Only one person out of seven ran outside behind the mom to help.
Iāll leave off with the following 7 stats that further paint the ugly picture of attention erosion marketers are facing.
Attention Apocalypse Facts
Young adults maintain optimal attention for just 76.24 seconds, while older adults manage 67.01 seconds
47 seconds is now the average time people spend on electronic devices before shifting focus to something new
Gen Z loses attention for advertisements in just 1.3 seconds
Content saturation makes it nearly impossible for individual messages to stand out
Information overload costs the global economy roughly $1 trillion annually
85% of online ads don't pass the 2.5-second attention-memory threshold required for brand embedding
41% of people remember only 1-10% of ads they've seen in the past 24 hours
Onward to This Weekās Marketing Wrap-Up.

This Weekās Marketing Wrap-Up
šMarketing 101 from the Nature Boy, 30 for 30 Film
YT Short: Have you tested these 5 Facebook Video Ad creatives yet?
šNew psychology study shows what makes someone cool
ChatGPT traffic referrals to publishers spike
š3 ways to leverage āSupport Theoryā as a sales angle
Top 10 favorite creator-led brands (+how consumers discover them)
š”Watch: Literal step-by-step path to finding new ideas
Long-form content for SEO aināt dead
šŗThe OG of personal branding, Mr. Rogers
Personal branding eye-opener
šSole Man - another 30 for 30 Film with a legendary sales funnelā¦
ā¦highlights networking, creativity, & not giving up when things went sideways.
šQuote of the Day at end of email.š

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Shane McLendon - Copy Kingpin.