KnowledgeForward

The December 9/10, 2006 Wall St Journal (p P4, subscription only) had an article called “Finding Idi Amin in America” that summoned up Attention Management terms when trying to describe why good, intelligent movies have trouble fining an audience.

According to Joe Morgenstern:

And - let’s be completely candid here - because of today’s mainstream audience, which suffers from information overload, attention deficit and, all too often, shriveled curiosity. By and large, we get the movies we deserve.

I think there are some things Attention Management can tell us about how people notice movies and start the mental process of deciding whether to see them, but other disciplines (customer relationship management, marketing, and art to name a few) can tell us a lot more.

I do think it would be interesting to apply the Attention Management conceptual architecture to a prototypical person who a movie company would like to consider seeing their film. The same attentional process of bringing some messages (about a film) forward while pushing others back is relevant, as are the proactive scanning techniques. The social networking component plays very large. I certainly have a set of rules I apply (if “Adam Sandler” appears anywhere in the credits, even as hairdresser, send to trash).