Marketing Madness!

It is so incredible that consumer attention spans have erroded so much in the past year that marketing practices that have been the norm for the last century are as fickle as the weather here in Toronto. Could this be a result of over stimulation? mass marketing reaching into to many corners of our lives? or simply consumers adapting to an environmental stimulus that serves little purpose for survival and thus is tuned out as unimportant.

Recent research done by the United States military demonstrated that a soilders vision is approximately three degrees of clear vision or less, and that a mind constantly analyzes that soilders surroundings and refocuses their eyes on the most eminent threat in the vicinity. By using electrical stimuli the US military has been able to create a devices that better enables a soilder to prioritize targets according to the danger level poised, not just the threats proximity. Enabling soilders to track more targets faster, and avoid danger before it actually becomes dangerous.

If we translate this into an urban environment, the urban jungle not urban warfare, we may be seeing a stage in our development influenced by mass advertising. Constant bombardment by advertisements each trying to trick our brain into identifying that ad as "the most eminent threat" and theirfore gain our attention for 3-4 seconds to convey a message we don't need may mean that our minds have learned to de-prioritize these messages as they never pose a threat and do not hinder our lifestyle. This then causing us to focus on other threats in our environment, like traffic, bicycle messengers, and beggers.