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Happy Independence Day, Inbox Hackers. Enjoy the time off. Hopefully you’re reading this by the pool or lake.

Today’s 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 Week’s Marketing Wrap-Up→ lots of short videos included.

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The Main Thing

2025’s ZERO Attention World

Little boy runs toward a busy street a week ago today. Guess how many of the seven adults nearby noticed?

ZERO.

That’s how bad it’s gotten. People, including me, do not pay attention. 

I’ll back up a little. 

Took my Labrador, Chase, to the vet for a laser treatment (great for pain relief). 

We’re 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 “Claire.”

Vet tech sees no takers, so she walks away. Returns to call for “Claire” again. No takers. She then walks up to the older woman and says, “ARE YOU CLAIRE?”

The woman finally looks up, all startled. She is, in fact, Claire. But oblivious to what’s 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, I’m just like her.

Another woman comes in.

She’s picking up a chihuahua-looking dog. Has a little boy with her. Looked about 4 years old. 

He’s 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 kid’s 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 street’s only about 20 feet from the front door!

Terrible drivers in this town too. No way they’d 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, it’s amazing none of us in the lobby noticed the kid run outside. 

I’d even been eyeballing him because he showed signs of hellionism when he entered the building. Didn’t want him running up and hopping on my dog’s 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 “Claire” 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.

Hellion’s mom loves her kid (despite zero parenting prowess), but didn’t 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 can’t 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. Can’t speak for other land masses. 

All that to say… 

If you think you’re 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 someone’s 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.

I’ll leave off with the following 7 stats that further paint the ugly picture of attention erosion marketers are facing.

Attention Apocalypse Facts

1. Young adults maintain optimal attention for just 76.24 seconds, while older adults manage 67.01 seconds

2. 47 seconds is now the average time people spend on electronic devices before shifting focus to something new

3. Gen Z loses attention for advertisements in just 1.3 seconds

4. Content saturation makes it nearly impossible for individual messages to stand out

5. Information overload costs the global economy roughly $1 trillion annually

6. 85% of online ads don't pass the 2.5-second attention-memory threshold required for brand embedding

7. 41% of people remember only 1-10% of ads they've seen in the past 24 hours 

Onward to This Week’s Marketing Wrap-Up.

Please share Inbox Hacking with a fellow marketing genius or business owner. I appreciate you reading and sharing. 

Shane McLendon - Copy Kingpin.

“I like hearing about other people’s experiences.” ~Jimmy McLendon (my grandpa’s response when I asked him why he talks to every single person we’d see when out and about 🙂.)