Advertising Needs Attention

are drawn to this bottle over the others on the shelf and cannot resist picking it up, Raymond says. She studies the subtle factors that motivate us to buy what we buy, and advises big companies on how powerful an advertisement is, and how it could be designed to stick more firmly in a consumer’s memory. Most of all she works out how to attract your attention. In today’s fast-paced consumer world, attention is in short supply. Whether we are taking our time shopping in a mall, surfing the internet for information, or just watching television as a form of passive entertainment, consumers are surrounded by messages—experiencing one every 15 seconds of our waking lives, according to some estimates. Last year, companies worldwide spent $401 billion on advertising, according to the independent World Advertising Research Centre in the UK. But as the graveyard of failed products shows, they usually get it wrong.