Winning Content is Not Measured in Seconds, Or Snacks
Recently, I was in three client meetings over a single week where the discussion was whether the content we were developing about awareness of a chronic disease and a biomedical R&D topic needed to be ‘snackable.’ Punchy. Pithy. ‘Two-bite.’ Short. Was brevity necessary to capture the ever-shortening stakeholder attention span?
Ever since the famous 2015 “Americans have the same attention span as goldfish” study released by Microsoft which was later redacted, communicators, marketers and some C-suite leaders believe stakeholders will get distracted or tune out if a message or piece of content isn’t delivered not just compellingly but also super quickly. The other assumption is that we’d need quantity—hit our audiences multiple times with the same briefly delivered message—for the information to stick.
It is clear human attention spans are changing. Look no further than the rise of TikTok and our attachment to multi-tasking. Indeed, a study found that 93% of people say they can multi-task better than, or as well as, the average person.
But, as storytellers and communicators of valuable information that we want our target stakeholders to use, learn and benefit from, and finally act on, is aiming for a seconds-long scrap of attention effective or even necessary?
The science says no.
And as a veteran of, and specialist in, healthcare communications, I’m trained to rely on research, data, and proof points when we develop narratives—or, what I’ve recently started to call the narrative mosaic, for client content. I also can’t resist relatable anecdotal evidence. Consider the following:
Humans have the capacity to pay attention to things for long periods of time. Moreover, there’s no evidence that attention spans have declined.
It takes longer than seconds to ‘memory encode.’ This is how information coming from content gets changed into a form that can be stored in the brain, processed, and placed in categories for storage and retrieval. Content that ‘memory encodes’ tends to stick.
Immersive story telling releases oxytocin in our brains which triggers our emotional centers, enabling us to connect to the content. This happens because our curiosity becomes unlocked. We’re interested, drawn in. When more of our brains are engaged, we pay attention for longer, we care, we remember, we repeat.
And, finally, who among us hasn’t binged watched a show? 73% of Americans admit to binge-watching, with the average binge lasting three hours and eight minutes. Ninety percent of millennials and 87% of Gen Z stated they binge-watch, and 40% of those age groups binge-watch an average of six episodes of television in one sitting. I confess, not with a little shame, that on a recent weekend I found myself with the apartment and the remote to myself, I binge watched two seasons of Emily in Paris.
What do all these findings mean? With a well-told, informative narrative, it is possible to capture and keep stakeholder attention for minutes (or longer) rather than seconds and achieve, if not exceed, communications objectives.
Here are five approaches to consider:
Plan content for a variety of attention types: arousal (alertness), focused (paying attention), selective (the ability to attend to a specific stimulus or activity in the presence of another-- as in watching a TikTok while reading something), and sustained – focused attention over a longer period – when you want stakeholders to be all in).
Do your homework to know how and when your stakeholders like to engage with content—which day parts, which platforms. Then plan the length of content that will engage them in the most effective way, on the optimal platform, at the right moments—a concept we refer to as a ‘gentle collision.’
Serialize the content. This approach is the best of both worlds -- allows you to engage in immersive story telling in smaller, digestible parts over time. We took this approach in an assignment to create an immersive narrative mosaic for the R&D ‘triple threat’ strategy, team, and science of a multinational biopharma company. A key element of our multi-platform program centered on podcast serials which broke down one story into consumable, 26-30-minute portions that were both individually compelling and also worked together to give rise to a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. The podcast serials attracted tens of thousands of internal and external stakeholders who returned for the next episode and the next serial. The program grew to include companion webinars, bylined article, social media, and a refreshed microsite.
Create ‘snackable’ seconds-long content to drive to longer-form content. The ’25 Voices’ program we created for the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation combined quick snapshots on social that led to articles on the organization website.
Surprise! The unexpected triggers emotional reactions – excitement, joy, curiosity—that make stakeholders feel invested. To reach our target audience for the PeriCoach, a solution for women suffering from urinary incontinence, we took an unexpected path: humor. A centerpiece 2 and a half-minute video called ‘Leakers Anonymous’ carried a Warning: This video will cause laughter. Leakers, prepare yourself before watching. Viewers – women and healthcare professionals-- were drawn into the longer than usual story. They laughed. They cried. They commiserated. Most importantly, they took action –information seeking and sales.
Still reading? The Organizational Change article in the October 2023 issue of the Harvard Business Review offers six rules that business leaders to follow to create stories that work: Authenticity, Feature yourself, Break with the Past and Lay a Path to the Future, Appeal to Hearts and Minds, Be Theatrical and Empower Others. Being ‘snackable’ is not required.
