Don’t chase attention. Create belonging.

Attention.

The thing brands are supposed to crave.

And, according to many headlines, podcasts, conference talks and LinkedIn posts, the thing that will determine whether your brand wins in the future.

You read about it everywhere.

The attention economy.

Attention is at a premium.

Attention is harder to earn.

Attention is the thing every brand should be competing for.

And to be clear, I’m not about to suggest attention doesn’t matter.

That would be ridiculous.

There’s no point creating work that nobody sees, reads or watches.

And there are people with far more impressive CVs than mine making a very strong case for attention as the future of brand building.

So, I’d be pretty foolish not to pay attention.

Sorry.

But I do wonder whether attention has become too much of an end in itself.

The thing we chase. The thing we measure. The thing we celebrate.

The thing that makes everyone feel a bit better because, finally, people are talking about our brand.

And I get it.

It feels good to be seen.

It feels good when something cuts through.

It feels good when your work gets noticed by people.

Clients like it. Agencies like it. Boards like it. Marketing teams definitely like it.

But, like most things that feel good, too much of it can start to do strange things to people.

And to brands.

Attention can become addictive.

Once it becomes the main goal, the behaviour can change.

The campaigns get more extreme.

The ideas get more outlandish.

The brand starts reaching for the next hit.

And slowly, sometimes without meaning to, it can lose sight of the people it was meant to care about in the first place.

What do they need?

What do they value?

What would genuinely help them?

There’s a difference between being noticed and being wanted.

And that’s why I think belonging matters more.

Belonging is harder.

Frustratingly harder.

It is harder to create. Harder to sustain. Harder to measure. Harder to explain to Executive team.

But I think it is also more valuable.

The best brands have always made people feel something.

Not just about the brand. About themselves.

Whether you buy from them, work for them, wear them, recommend them, follow them, defend them or tell your friends about them, there is usually something deeper going on.

A connection.

A sense that these are my people. This is my taste.

This says something about what I value.

This is a brand I want to be associated with.

That is not attention.

That is belonging.

And it matters because people don’t want to be interrupted.

They want to feel seen. They want to feel part of something.

They want to know that the brands they give their time, money, energy or talent to understand something about them.

That doesn’t mean every brand needs to become a cult.

Or build a community. Or start acting like it has a higher purpose than it really does.

In fact, please don’t.

But it does mean brands need to think beyond the immediate act of getting noticed.

Because attention can make people look. But belonging gives them a reason to stay.

So how do you create belong?

Well, for sure it’s an art, not a science. But here’s a few things I’d think about…

1.     Start with the right ambition

If the goal is simply to get noticed, you will make a certain type of work.

That work might be funny. It might be clever. It might be good. 

But if the goal is to create a stronger connection with the people you care about, you start somewhere different.

You ask better questions.

Will the right people care?

Will they feel understood?

Will they see themselves in it?

That shift matters.

Because people can usually feel the difference between a brand trying to get attention and a brand trying to give them something worth their attention. 

The new Monzo ads for their ‘Get busy living’ platform are an exceptional example of this.

2.   Show people how you think

The goal of business is not to do business with everyone.

It is to do business with the people who value what you value.

So, show them.

In the things you choose to talk about. And the things you choose not to.

Lots of brands want to stand out, but they do not want to leave anyone out.

Their branding feels safer and easier to ignore as a result.

But belonging requires some level of recognition.

People need to be able to say ‘this feels like me’.

Or even ‘I’m not sure this is for me, but I know exactly who it is for’.

3.   Give value

Value does not always mean a white paper, a discount code or a two-hour webinar.  

It doesn’t have to be heavy. It can be much simpler than that.

Make someone laugh.

Make them feel smart.

Help them explain something.

Give them a line they want to repeat. Or a story they want to share.

Too much brand communication still feels like it exists for the brand.

If all you ever do is talk about yourself, you become the dinner party guest everyone slowly tries to move away from.

One of my favourite thoughts on storytelling comes from David Hieatt:

“The power of your story is that other people WANT to tell it for you.”

And if you want people to share your story, you must give them something they would actually want to pass on.

Something that makes them look good.

Something that says something about them.

Something they feel part of.

This is especially true with employees.

People will not share company posts on LinkedIn just because the business asks them to.

Or at least not with any real feeling.

They will share things that make them proud. 

Things that reflect well on the place they work and, by extension, on them.

4.   Make creativity mean something

The late Sir Ken Robinson described creativity as ‘original ideas that add value’.

I’ve always loved that.

Not original or different for the sake of it.

Original ideas that add value.

The kind of creativity that makes people take a screenshot.

Send it to someone.

Talk about it later.

Remember how it made them feel.

By focusing on belonging, I’m not saying we should care less about creativity.

The opposite.

I think moving from attention to belonging asks more of creativity. It needs it to matter.

There’s a James Gleick quote I used to include in decks when I was teaching colleagues about creativity and storytelling:

“When information is cheap, attention becomes expensive.”

I still think that’s true.

But if I were doing that session tomorrow, I’d probably add something else.

When attention is chased, belonging is cherished.

And in a world where so many brands are trying to be seen, I think people will increasingly value the ones that make them feel part of something.

Not in a forced way.

Not in a “join our movement” way.

Just in a human way.

A brand that understands them.

That gives something back. That helps them say something about who they are.

A brand they want to spend time with and that they want to tell other people about.

Attention matters.

Of course it does.

I just don’t think it should be the whole ambition.