If you work in marketing you convince yourself that everyone is looking at your brand and company, yet the reality couldn't be further from the truth.

This is because people today are bombarded with brand messages (adverts) of circa 4k -10k per day across multiple devices.

What's happened is that we've all started to disengage with the corporate message, basically the level of trust has been diluted which in turn means we no longer relate to, or trust what you're saying is true.

To quote former Unilever CMO Keith Weed, “A brand without trust is just a product, and advertising without trust is just noise.” Consumers have always been mistrusting of advertising and brands -- that’s their default position.

The days of trying to 'buy' attention is well and truly over. But volume isn’t the only problem, as ads are becoming ever more intrusive, inescapable and noisy due to advances in technology and data science. People are constantly bombarded with digital junk, triggering ad fatigue and banner blindness. Everywhere we go, we’re greeted by unwarranted ads -- tags and cookies follow us from place to place -- insisting we buy things we’ve already bought or have no intention of buying.

A surplus of bad advertising is overpopulating people’s screens and feeds. 

Today there is a significant move to brands that invest in 'earning' that attention.

Whilst there are many ways a company can go about this consumers are today providing us with the opportunity to do this via 'social media', but it requires a shift in mindset thinking away from the current 'advertise and promote' thinking that's been the modus operandi for brands since the birth of the internet as we know it today, along with the training of all employees and most important a shift in culture.