Do you still remember that Lionel Messi had a penalty kick saved and Iceland held on for a 1-1 draw against Argentina at the World Cup on Saturday?
Yes, of course you can recall this exciting moment.
But, can you also recall the brand behind the soccer gate? Is it a Chinese brand?
And what was the logo on the team shirt of Cristiano Ronaldo, Adidas or Nike?
Not surprisingly, you can’t remember it.
You just can’t see the logos even though they are so obvious in front of your eyes.
We call this phenomenon “inattentional blindness”.
Inattentional Blindness: Looking without Seeing
Research shows that we rarely see what we are looking at unless our attention is directed to it (Mack A., & Rock, 1998).
Think about it. Everyday, you are walking the same route to office, have you ever noticed if anything has been changed on the street?
Skoda Fabia has created an interesting attention test (it’s actually an ad). Watch the video carefully and you won’t believe what happens:
Skoda Fabia’s Selective Attention Illusion Test (Video)
If your attention is focusing on the blue Fabia, you may not notice that the whole street around the car is changing. Even you figure out the changing environment, you may not notice there is an ape on the roof at certain point.
Previously, a famous study called “Invisible Gorilla” was also conducted to elaborate so-called “inattentional blindness” by cognitive psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris.
The illusion of attention – Invisible Gorilla
In the video, people are asked to count the number of passes made by one basketball team. It’s interesting to find out that about half of watchers missed a person in a gorilla suit walking in and out of the scene thumping its chest.
Is the gorilla really invisible or are people suddenly blind?
Our eyes actually don’t see everything in our field of view. We fail to notice an unexpected visible object that is in plain sight.
Are Your Brand Hidden in “Where’s Waldo”?
Nowadays, people normally are exposed to about 3000-5000 ad messages every day.
Additionally, we produce 4.6 billion pieces of content daily, and most of them are digital.
In business world, marketing is already shifted from traditional media to content war. Content marketing becomes so important that it is one of the major roles of modern marketing.
(Further reading: Why Is Content Marketing So Important? Here’s What It Needs To Be.)
Today, we are in an age of digital information. And, we are already drowned in the information flood we created.
We believe that our content is so special that all consumers should read every content we produce.
We believe that our logos are so visible that every audience should notice during World Cup.
In fact, your marketing content is just like a tiny Waldo hidden in the world of “Where’s Waldo?”.
Attentional Bottleneck: Our Brain Makes Us Blind
What makes people fall into inattention blindness?
It’s the trick of our Brain.
Our brain is small, 2% of body size but it consumes 20% of the energy of the body.
The brain is so smart that it makes shortcuts to save energy.
If our brain can run on autopilot, it will do that as soon as possible.
Remember the first time you learned how to ride a bike, you needed to take a lot of effort. Once you’ve learnt it, you can ride it without thought, just like walking. You are now in the least energy mode – autopilot.
Autopilot helps relieve your mental energy so that you can spend on other things that are more important.
Similarly, if the brain allows us to pay attention to everything, imagine how much energy it will consume you?
Our brain has limited capacity and our attention has bottleneck.
A narrow neck of a bottle restricts the rate of a fluid flow through. The narrower the bottleneck, the lower the rate of flow.
Attention is selective. In order to focus on something, we need to reject other things. We basically can’t focus on all things at a time.
The role of marketing is to make sure our content can be selected, successfully passing through consumers’ bottleneck of attention.
“Attention is a prerequisite for all marketing efforts.” (Sacharin 2000)
In the traditional advertising model, AIDA, it also shows that “attention” is the first and necessary step that people go through when exposed to advertising and before making a purchase (Vakratsas & Ambler 1999).
The bad news to marketers is that people are blind to your marketing content if you fail to get their attention. Your marketing campaign is totally waste of money.
On the contrary, if your marketing content can catch people’s attention, you have a chance to make them inattentionally blind to your competitors’ campaign.
In my next article, I’m going to further elaborate how to make people pay attention to your marketing content.
About Author：
Eddie Hung：China Marketing Strategist | Business Incubator
Further reading:
Unlock The Buy Button Inside Your Customers’ Brains.
Douyin Reaches 100 Million Daily Video Views. Tips for Marketing on Douyin.
How Durex Makes Content Marketing so Sexy in China？
Why Is Content Marketing So Important? Here’s What It Needs To Be.
Reference:
- Thomas Zoëga Ramsøy, Consumer Neuroscience and Neuromarketing
- Mack, A. and Rock, I. (1998). Inattentional Blindness, MIT Press
- Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, Invisible Gorilla
Winning in China Marketing 
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