Sed fugit interea fugit irreparabile tempus
Virgil, Georgics
The long short, Time Flies. Actually, the closer translation is Time Flees (an interesting side bar for those so interested.)
"But meanwhile it flees: time flees irretrievably, while we wander around”
Flies, flees, same difference. (Neither are insects, which would at least require a misspelling.) The meaning remains, and more than ever before, “Time” does feel like it’s bolted out the gates and building to break-neck. And we are right along with it, no longer wandering, but keeping pace, flying just as a fast.
This quote, from a well-known Scottish Psychiatrist called Ronald Laing, who spent a lifetime studying the environmental triggers of mental illness (which is telling in itself).
What I think Laing fundamentally means by this is that 21st Century Life too often feels like a Constant Bewildering Blur. That everything is happening faster and faster. That it invariably feels like Today is already out of date and Tomorrow is already upon us, like we’re getting to the future too soon, that we no longer find any time to stop and stare or contemplate.
OK, let’s all breathe. But it does sound rather familiar, doesn’t it? I know you’re with me on this one. I know because I have bar charts to prove it.
Really, take a look, these are actually quite good ones.
Bar Chart Number 1: The Number of Years taken for Major Technologies to Reach 50% of Homes.
It took 71 years for telephones to make their way into 50% of homes. It took radios 28 years. It took MP3 players just 6. The speed at which we embrace new technologies is accelerating. Compared to the increasingly distant past, now we’re all Early Adopters.
Bar Chart Number 2: We face a growing Time Famine
Bar Chart Number 3: Dead Time... is officially dead.
For me, there’s a stat here that Says So Much. Suddenly given a “spare 20 minutes”, less than 5% of us can find it in ourselves to "just relax". We struggle to switch off, prefer to remain ON, connected, tuned-in. We’re culpable in all of this, all this speed and haste and growing blur.
The late great George Carlin paints it best, better than any bar charts ever could, even good ones.
So what does all this mean, what am I trying to say here? I’m bemoaning what exactly?
In truth, I’m not bemoaning anything, not giving anything The Big Neg. I’m just saying this.
Getting attention isn’t easy. People have less time to listen. In terms of commercial messages, they filter, edit, ignore more than ever before.
As Consumers, we’re in an almost permanent State of Acceleration.
As Brand Builders therefore, the question becomes:
How can our commercial messages carry sufficient weight to stop the Accelerated Consumer in his tracks?
Where Consumers are Constant Motion, how can brands become Immovable Objects?
Nigel Morris, CEO of Aegis North America, puts it very simply and very shrewdly when he offers this:
“Stop interrupting what people like and want. Be what people like and want.”
I really like this thought. And I like the implications just as much. It means the marketing-communications model is facing an epic overhaul. From PUSH marketing and interrupting people. To PULL marketing, to drawing people towards a brand with content and ideas that are attractive and sexy and curious and the kind of thing they naturally want.
For brands, I think the message is loud and very clear. Don’t get in the way of consumers. Get in their cross-hairs. This is how we stop the Accelerated Consumer in his tracks. This is how brands “Create Time”, even in a world where no one has much.
Because while so few of us feel we have any time these days, we still find time, where possible, to continue doing what we like and want.
"What we LIKE & WANT": it’s something to think on the next time your train is running 20 minutes late. Assuming that is you’re not already doing something you like doing more.
SP.
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