In a world where the most precious currency is attention, the few enterprises who once owned the media deciding audience consumption, are now watching the end of an Era.
What happens today — almost everyone — watch what they want, when they want. There is a tension though between the amount of content produced over the internet and the attention people using those platforms can spend on consuming content. These sites transform as new material is added, and attention can easily wander from page to page. According to Bernard Marr & Co, the amount of data we produce every day is truly mind-boggling.
There are 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created each day at our current pace, but that pace is only accelerating with the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT).
Let’s look into the future, Ah wait! We are in the future now; we’re living in the future predicted decades or even centuries ago by incredible authors and visionaries.
According to George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 predicted so many aspects of the future that referring to it has become shorthand for any situation where technology threatens to control aspects of society. In fact, the term “Big Brother,” which refers to abuse of government power—specifically involving surveillance—originated in the book.
“In the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes” —Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol time-traveled and viewed us in 2020. His prediction was the closest thing to a prophecy coming true. When social media proliferated, it heralded as the penultimate innovation in communicating and social interactions. Everyone can be famous, and that’s not figuratively, albeit for a brief span of time. All these platforms embodies our propensity of short attention span that is getting shorter and shorter.
Today big companies divide the big “pie of audience attention” into tiny little shares. Pretty much everyone and everything can drive audience attention and retention away from the giant's content producers. Anyone can create a new TV channel via YouTube or broadcast via online radio or podcasts, making it really competitive for the once exclusive source of media outlets such as newspapers, film, television, radio, and satellite broadcasting.
Today these media outlets are competing with millions of people creating content on Tik Tok, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Quora, Twitter, Tumbler, WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and the list goes on.
The way we spend our time is how we spend our life, and with all these new outlets and access to information, our time is permanently occupied and our lives exceedingly accelerated. There's too much to learn, to see, to experience it, but we must learn to do most of it digitally.
Internet has allowed the world to connect without being physically there, to learn without economic or institutional barriers, to work without commuting to a specific location, and the global pandemic in 2020 has speeded the digital world tremendously. With the impossibility of human contact and technology developing at a staggeringly quick pace in today’s world, we’re no longer on the same boat, we’re on the same bed. We share everything with everyone.
We need to unlearn the analog way, dive into the digital way and adapt fast, real fast.
People and businesses need to adapt to this new era, everything is going digital and as automatised as possible. Human touch and presence is becoming an expensive commodity and in this future we’re living in, many analog businesses and jobs are already disappearing. Below a list of a few of them.
15 examples of business and jobs that are disappearing:
1) Print Magazine and Newspapers - Most of them have already discontinued their print editions and run exclusively online.
2) Paper Maps - There’re many applications which replace the use of a paper map, such as Google Maps, Waze, Bing Maps, MapQuest.
3) Paper Receipts - Keeping receipts in your bag or pocket to throw it out later is very silly. Soon we’ll all realise that we do not need the paper receipt anymore simply because the world is digital.
4) Paperwork - With google docs and digital signatures becoming the norm, most paper documents will cease to exist.
5) Calculators and Alarm clocks - Most phones and smart watches have these and more features built in.
6) Landline phones - These are on their way out completely.
7) Hard drives, remote controls, charger cables, headphones with cords - Everything is going wireless, stored and controlled from the “Cloud”
8) Digital Cameras - Mobile phones industry is growing so fast that almost any mobile phone can take better photos and record better videos these days.
9) Delivery Workers - Air drone delivery services will soon replace delivery workers -.
10) Travel Agent worker - The convenience of booking online has crushed these jobs.
11) Shop sales assistant - People are more and more used to the convenience of buying online, from clothes, shoes, accessories, food, and the list goes on.
12) Bank Cashier - Most banks are closing their physical locations and moving all transactions online.
13) Supermarket Cashier - The fast check pay machines or membership chips will eventually become the norm.
14) Sports Referee - Football’s governing body, FIFA, is relenting to pressure to introduce more technology into the game, with goal-line technology now a standard and the video assistant referee (VAR) system being utilised in top European leagues. This follows the example of other sports such as tennis, cricket and rugby, which have long since been using technology to make real-time decisions during a match.
15) Office Secretary - These jobs are being replaced by VA’s (Virtual Assistants) and office desks are no longer needed in the digital era.
So, what is the good news then? How do we transition from the analog to the digital world with excitement, faith and hope of a better future?
In my humble opinion, I believe we have already achieved the move from analog-to-digital technologies. What we now need, is to stop feeling guilty about using technology, instead fully embrace this new digital world filled with incredible opportunities—Learn the language of this modern world: “Watch (subscribe) like and share! Money is where the attention is. Attention is the currency of the digital world. To grab people's attention towards your product or service, you'll need to tell them a good story and ask them to share it.
Learn the Power of Storytelling, watch how brands are using storytelling to promote and sell their products/services. Branded short films and "documercials" forge deep connections with their audiences. These campaigns are so entertaining; audiences don’t even realize they are advertisements.
Here’s an example of how the Spanish Fashion brand Bimba and Lola uses storytelling to promote and sell their accessories, bags and shoes by presenting a short film that just happens to be paid for by Bimba and Lola, but that part is less important than the story we’re watching unfold on-screen with their brand's subliminal message—I give you a story, you give me your attention = your money.
That's how you ask for audience attention, through good stories. As Jim Rohn once said, "Asking is the beginning of receiving. There's an ocean of opportunities out there, so make sure you don't go to the ocean with a teaspoon. At least take a bucket so the kids won't laugh at you."