Faris Yakob starts off as you would hope for a book called Paid Attention, explaining that it is no longer possible to purchase the magazine, program or time slot to have your entire target audience seeing and/or hearing your message. Media have multiplied, fragmented and taken the audience with them.

But then he walks away from the argument. He gets on his horse and rides off in all directions. There are lots of references to studies, psychological, biological and case. There’s lots of name dropping. But he doesn’t examine the state of paid attention. The last third of the book is about working in ad agencies: what do ad agencies do, the importance of advertising awards, how creativity works and how it should be broken out. The exalted act of stealing. The evolving role of the planner.

He cites all kinds of wonderfully creative campaigns which were considered successful, but as in medicine, the operation might have been a success, but the patient died (New products have an 80% failure rate). There’s a lot of evidence Yakob reads widely, fiction and non. But then, he cites the dubious authority of Jonah Lehrer, a totally discredited author/researcher. Twice.

Yakob can be refreshingly truthful, calling market research wrong and the traditional purchase funnel “explanatory fiction”. All the brainscanning advertisers pay for only proves we don’t know how or when decisions are made to purchase their products. Forget about why. Dictating when and where content will be encountered is impossible for much of an on-demand world, he says. “Calling people consumers tricks you into thinking they spend their whole lives buying stuff, or thinking about buying stuff. But they really are not that interested.”

Which brings me to his focus on brands. By limiting brands to consumables purchases, he (and every other writer I’ve seen on this topic) leaves out all other kinds of brands. Not all brands imply something to buy and not all “relationships” are commercial. You don’t have to have a “relationship” with a brand – the holy grail of ad agencies in the social media era. FBI conjures an unmistakable response in everyone. So does Red Cross. The Salvation Army. Mount Everest. Uncle Sam. Smokey The Bear. They do not speak to product value or aspects or functionality, luxury or low end, customer service or lifetime guarantees. Or style, innovation or class. They don’t advertise on the Super Bowl, Yakob’s favorite wellspring of examples. But they are extremely strong brands. And we can learn from them, if someone would bother.

From this book, I imagine Faris Yakob to be highly intelligent and insightful. It might be fascinating to see him apply himself totally to a single thesis and dig deep. This little book does not show that effort.

David Wineberg ( )