Paying, buying and selling attention

It's book review time again. This is one I've been meaning to read since it came to my (ahem) attention at the beginning of the year.  I think it may even have been recommended in The Times. 

It's an important topic, but I was disappointed. The Friends of Attention seem to be a group of intellectuals living in an arty-farty bubble somewhere away from the real world. Anyway, here's my review.

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This was one of those books that I had high hopes for. It started well, but I soon got rather bogged down and irritated by the way it's written. I probably should have paid more attention to the sub-title. I worked in brands and advertising and both “manifestos” and “movements” were flavour of the month in the late 90s and early 00s.

The topic is an important and thought-provoking one. What is our relationship as humans with (Big) tech? Is it a fair “value exchange” or more a case of the tech companies extracting (“fracking”) human attention and spirit?

The “Friends of Attention” are clear where they stand on this question. And there are some insightful ideas in the book - for example, maybe what’s often called “distraction” in negative terms is better for us than the sort of “attention/engagement” that the tech firms want to capture.

But the way the book is written feels too dramatic and over-the-top. Italics and capital letters are splattered all over the place, and reading it feels like being shouted at by an over-earnest, slightly unhinged Rik Mayall- type student.

The solutions offered seem somewhat naive and the sort of things that any normal common sense person does anyway. Making things, playing instruments or chess, home cooking, voluntary work ...

Right. I’m off to band practice.

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If you still feel tempted to have a read, it's probably wise to look at their website first. If you're intrigued by statements like "The astonishing reality of things and persons", "Practical mysticism is not impractical" and "Freedom of attention may feel like unfreedom", then do go ahead.

I did like the Spirograph patterns, though. Wish I'd kept my set.

RETROWURST: Viva La Vida (June 1987)

                                            Me and colleague, Ragley Hall June 1987

I read a depressing, but I imagine all-too-frequent account in the Sunday Times yesterday. This concerned a student who'd already accepted a graduate job from a strategy consultancy and was preparing to move to London once he'd finished his final dissertation. 

But then he received an email saying that the consultancy had withdrawn the offer. Further investigations suggested that the company would be "employing" AI rather than graduates to do the job. 

I'm thoroughly pleased that I started my career when I did. The past seems like a foreign country now - we did things differently then. 

The photo is me in my 20s, not much older than the young man in the article. 

The event was the Millward Brown summer party, in June 1987. The venue was Ragley Hall, Warwickshire. Just down the road from where the research agency was based, in Leamington Spa. 

It all looks very glamorous, in a 1980s way. And it was. Even as market researchers, we were wined and dined and treated as royalty. Was it over-the-top? Possibly, but it certainly built up good client:agency relationships and made feel we were valued clients, whatever our level in the pecking order. 

The 1980s market research landscape was full of names that have long since disappeared into the WPPs, Bains and other big conglomerates. 

Taylor Nelson, BMRB, Mass Observation, The Research Business - and all manner of boutiquey qualitative agencies. And most of these would lay on a party, or a dinner at some point in the year. 

Fast forward to 2026. I've had a recent invitation from what-was-Millward-Brown, now Kantar. It's not Ragley Hall, rather somewhere on the Bockenheimer Landstrasse in Frankfurt. And I don't think it warrants a ballgown, as it's not a ball, not even a dinner dance. 

It's a 2 hour awards ceremony aka presentation, run by Kantar, giving out Advertising Effectiveness Awards. There will be "drinks and snacks" afterwards. 

This is how it works these days. The big agencies call the shots - get the right scores on their traffic light system and you might pick up an award if you're lucky, and get to chink glasses with a Kantar director of something-or-other. 

Having answered the invitation and said yes, that would be interesting, I had a reply. I am on the "waiting list." Well, I think I'll find something more constructive to do with my time that day. I expect AI sifted through the replies and composed the "waiting list" email, too.