Everyone is busy! Most of us are juggling a lot, and that means our attention can be very fractured. Demanding jobs, balancing work and home life, hobbies, family, travel…there are so many things that command our attention.
Even when we should be winding down—like when we are on vacation, or home from work—we are often doing multiple things, including engaging with attention-zappers like checking our phones constantly.
While there is some debate about whether our attention spans are actually getting shorter, there is evidence that technology does “interfere with our ability to concentrate”.
This poses a problem for communicators, particularly when they are trying to convey complex or detailed ideas. So, how do you break through the constant clutter and noise to deliver messages in our short-attention span world?
Enter the rise of “micro messaging”. Shorter, sharper messages included in a public relations effort can help to deliver ideas to distracted audiences. For PR programs, this means developing campaigns that will likely have a different pace and cadence to those in the past.
Social Media Influences
Early social media platforms gave many communicators a crash course in developing short messages. With its 140-character count, early Twitter (now X) tested many of us on how to distil a message to its most essential elements. Ernest Hemingway’s sparse prose—simple and direct—was frequently referenced, along with a six-word short story that has long been misattributed to him (For sale: baby shoes, never worn).
This phase of social media messaging was both a contributor to cultivating short attention spans and a great training ground that conditioned us to develop messages using short and direct wording.
Hard character counts meant URL shortening services were necessary, if you wanted to link to a more detailed explanation or website.
Facebook’s lack of character restrictions seemed positively luxurious, as one could write a full sentence without struggling to shorten words by removing all the vowels or other less-than-ideal hacks. However, being confronted by a large block of dense text has its drawbacks too. As people became conditioned to short messages, the question arose: will they read every word of a long post?
Lessons from Advertising
PR, marketing, and advertising are all separate disciplines. Advertising communicates to generate demand and sell products or services, marketing is designed to create opportunities to promote and sell, whilst PR communicates to build trust and deepen relationships with stakeholders and other audiences.
People can be resistant to sales tactics, tuning them out rather readily—which is easy to do with so many distractions around. The first thing you must do is capture attention. The next is to convey as much information as possible with as few words as possible.
Consider adverts on bus stops or billboards. These are not chock-a-bloc full of text; they typically carry a single captivating image, with a minimum of text.
PR professionals looking to understand micro-messaging should pay close attention to these types of displays. Examine what captured your attention, and how quickly the text and image conveyed a purchasing message.
Now, think about how a PR message might be conveyed in a similar manner. You are looking for very tight, targeted messages. The image causes one to pause, the text and image together convey the message.
If your PR program requires more detailed explanations of complex ideas, you will need to consider a multi-step approach that captures attention first, and then delivers the message in manageable “chunks”.
Use Images and Video
The ability to use images to convey most or part of a message is invaluable. With the right picture, a message can be relayed at a glance. There is a reason the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” resonates.
Consider incorporating photos, videos, and infographics into communications. It can take time and creativity to find the right image to convey messages, but can be well worth the energy put into development.
Short videos in particular have become extremely effective at delivering messages. The rise of Tik-Tok, Reels, and Instagram all point to the willingness of people to proactively seek out and share this type of content, making it an effective form of communication.
Storytelling and Repetition
Successful conveyance of a message takes into account the conditions under which the ideas are being delivered. A fun example of this is the way in which the Burma-Vita Company designed roadside advertising to account for increased numbers of motorists in the U.S. Starting in the 1920s, the company placed signs along the roadways. They were spaced far enough apart that alone they did not make much sense, but as one was driving, the signs appeared at the right cadence to form an advertising jingle.
Short messages that capture attention and promote curiosity so that the viewer is waiting for or seeking out the next message can be very effective. The key is to think carefully about how people are encountering information, and design your program with this in mind.
Similarly, you will likely need to consider how frequently to repeat messages. There is a balance that needs to be struck between repeating enough that the message is seen, without it becoming an annoyance.
Conclusion
Whether our attention spans are decreasing or not, it is clear that there are more distractions—and that can interfere with a PR professional’s ability to connect with an audience. This means that our communications programmes must be designed in ways that account for distractions, rather than pretending they do not exist. We can learn from related disciplines, like advertising, to help deliver messaging in ways that resonate.
The use of images, storytelling, and carefully considered repetition of key messages are effective tactics to deploy in this age of fractured attention.
