Almost three decades ago, the UK’s number one hit record at the start of the new year was “Brass in Pocket” by The Pretenders. “I gotta have some of your attention,” sang Chrissie Hynde, the band’s front-woman, alluringly, “Give it to me.”
That refrain proved very popular with teenage girls back then – at least at the parties I went to. They would sing it noisily. From the teenage boy’s point of view, paying attention was not the problem. It was whether that attention turned out to be welcome or not.
Companies are desperate to command our attention, too. It is not just their share of the market that counts, it is their share of people’s minds.
“At a certain point, everyone is in competition for your attention,” Jonathan Schwartz, Sun Microsystems’s chief executive, once told me. “Everyone is in competition for being able to sell you something, being able to appeal to you as a consumer.” So long as your customer is paying attention to you, your competitors are being ignored.
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