Look at me.
Look at me!
LOOK AT ME!
A kid will scream “Look at me” 10 times before a parent finally says “What?” and the child spins in a circle, or says “Hi,” or holds up a stick.
The exasperated parent can’t believe they fell for it again or that they interrupted what they were doing to look at a stick. And parents apparently love their children.
You think we’d learn early in life that “Look at me” isn’t a great long-term strategy, but the last 15 years have been filled with companies trying to make sure we look at them.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, news sites, email campaigns, phone games, and other reaches of the internet age insist that you give them your attention.
We have incentivized clicks, impressions and volume in our marketing campaigns and revenue streams.
How we, the consumers, don’t feel like the internet is just a million kids yelling “Look at me” is a marvel.
Now contrast this with when you tell kids that “I have a secret…”.
The kids are going to do everything they can to find out that secret and then tell that secret to everyone they know.
The need to know a secret doesn’t change when we become adults. We need to find things out. Cliffhangers, questions and hints send people into a frenzy.
We don’t need people to beg for our attention. We just need them to make it secretive.