New digital divide

Let me start with a bet. With you, dear reader. There are 523 words in this article. I’m willing to wager that before you hit the 100th word, you would have been distracted by a call, text, email, tweet, Facebook or LinkedIn update, link on an adjacent tab in your browser, or even (gasp!) an old-fashioned face-to-face conversation with someone in your immediate physical proximity. And that distraction won’t be the last before you finish reading through to the end.

Go ahead, take your time in responding to the distraction. I am not going anywhere, nor is this article. Oh, and welcome to the new digital divide, the era of digitally divided attention.

Used to be that the digital divide was the traditional notion of the haves and the have-nots. But with optic fibres and telecom towers within a spade’s dig and stone’s throw pretty much anywhere in the world, the corner rickshaw-wala as well as the ivory-tower-ensconced executive have jumped into the conversation today.

While media fragmentation is perhaps older news than cave paintings today, the thing is we are now in a time of incredibly divided attention. Psychologists will tell you that women have long been past masters of the art of divided attention, seemingly not listening to their male companions but able to recall word for word what was being said to them even while being distracted. Alas, men are not as gifted naturally. Perhaps it is to men’s advantage that they now have a legitimate scapegoat to blame in the form of all the digital distractions.

What’s the point of this rant, you may ask. As the fake Javed Akhtar says in the Actor Calling Actor jokes on Big FM, yeh sab to lazmi hai.

The point is most brands seem to be oblivious of this when they create interactions with and messages for people (yes, including you). Yes, there are exceptions of course. But how many brands can you name that are involved in the pursuit of being interesting rather than merely different? Brands that provide content that is useful and entertaining. Brands that excite and thrill. Brands that reassure and become shoulders to lean on. Brands that uplift. But most importantly, brands that can garner undivided attention because they have something of interest to offer to people. Something that is more interesting than a call, text, tweet, Facebook or LinkedIn update. Because these today have unfortunately become the standard-bearers of what passes off as conversation, at the cost of ignoring those you may even physically be co-present with. Wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands, children, parents and best friends are today victim to the new digital divide. If Mark Antony had to make his oft-quoted plea of “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears” today, he’d probably be met with a “Just a minute, dude, while I reply to this text.”

Respect, love, relationships, hierarchy, chains of command, none of these seem to stand a chance in the face of digitally divided attention. All that seems to matter is what is of most interest to us, right now. Is your brand being that, right now?

(The author is National Planning Head, Dentsu Marcom)