Pay attention to the rise of easy-focus content

Opinion

In a world where attention is expensive, your message must be economical. It doesn’t matter if this is creatively valid — this is the reality we face now.

There’s a screenwriting maxim that states: “Show, don’t tell.”

Characters should reveal their motives and mettle through actions, not exposition. No-one should announce their innermost thoughts via clumsy voiceover. And dialogue heavy with explanation? A storytelling crime.

In Aliens, Ripley doesn’t deliver a speech about mourning her daughter or rediscovering purpose. She dives back into the nest, armed to the teeth, to save a child she barely knows, fighting a queen alien who is equally driven by maternal instinct.

In The Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne doesn’t vocalise his injustice or how he longs for his freedom. He literally digs his way out of prison over decades by breaching his cell wall with a rock hammer, scratch by scratch. If he’d voiced his plans, the movie would have been over pretty quickly.

The moral of the story is in the subtext. The meaning is in the metaphor.

But, recently, that golden rule of storytelling is changing.

Netflix has detected a change in our viewing habits. Getting ahead of the curve, it’s now giving script notes requesting that characters announce what they are doing and repeatedly explain plot points to other characters. It’s a practice that seems to fly in the face of decades of cinematic wisdom.

Why is this happening?

To find out, pay close attention. Or, more likely, don’t — because that’s precisely the issue.

Divided attention: A new default

In Stolen Focus, Johann Hari outlines 12 reasons why modern life has shredded our ability to concentrate.

One core culprit is stress. Historically, stress was acute and reserved for moments of near-starvation or physical threat. Now, we live in a state of perpetual alert, with a million Chrome tabs of worry running constantly in the background.

Hari also highlights pollution and the death of long-form reading. But his first and most powerful reason? Task-switching.

Double vision: The reality of splitting focus

There’s a mountain of evidence showing how moving between tasks — checking your phone while watching TV, flipping between tabs while reading, answering emails while listening — obliterates focus.

Even so, task-switching media consumption isn’t new.

We’ve been talking about “second-screening” for over a decade. It began as a complementary activity, like live-tweeting about Eurovision or reacting to Bake Off finales.

Before that, listening to music while driving was a norm. But we’re hardwired to process audio while moving; a survival advantage for communicating during the hunt.

Yet while it is possible to “media multitask”, certain types of content resist this splitting of focus. That’s why experts say kids shouldn’t do homework while watching TV. Or why texting while driving is a lethal mix.

And it’s this type of content that is changing the way we consume media.

Enter easy-focus content

Today, content creators, particularly streamers like Netflix, are no longer fighting this fractured attention. They’re designing for it.

Recognising that audiences are half-watching while cooking, working or scrolling, creators are making shows that hold together even if half-ignored. It’s now all about maximising viewing time with minimal effort.

Call it “easy-focus content”.

Take Netflix’s $300m film The Electric State, helmed by Marvel’s Russo brothers.

Critics slammed it as visually stunning but predictable and obvious. Characters openly state their intentions. The plot is straightforward, without metaphor or subtext.

Yet it’s a smash hit on Netflix, dominating the charts.

Look closer and you’ll see a vast gap between the negative critics’ score and positive viewers’ score on Rotten Tomatoes.

It’s as if critics, watching intently in dark viewing rooms, hunting for subtext and metaphor, missed what casual audiences experienced: a bright, linear film designed to be followed while distracted.

Netflix knows its audience and knows how people are really watching.

In fact, one of the few industry voices with a positive take on The Electric State was producer and writer Richard Osman, who said “I really rather liked it” before adding, significantly: ”I was on my phone the whole time.”

As if its “followability” was an accolade.

Markets dictate shapes and sizes

That’s not to say, however, that the era of dense, complex, intelligent storytelling is over. After all, Oppenheimer took $1bn globally.

Rather, we are seeing a clearer distinction between two kinds of content.

Foreground content, like the films of Christopher Nolan, requires commitment and concentration. Background content, like The Electric State, can simply “be on” and co-exist alongside your other time commitments.

In that sense, what easy-focus content offers consumers is more choice. Viewers opt for content that reflects how much focus they have at their disposal in that moment.

Quiet night in on your own? Maybe go for The Brutalist. Streaming on your commute? Maybe go for The Electric State. With the subtitles turned on.

New media modernises old media

Zoom out and we are seeing media behaviours pioneered on social platforms being retrofitted to older formats.

Facebook and Instagram perfected the concept of “thumb-stopping content” to grab attention mid-scroll. Today, we see the BBC expertly designing its programme thumbnails to catch our eye while scrolling through iPlayer hunting for entertainment.

TikTok normalised the use of captions, ensuring the message lands even amid the noise of the real world. Now, 61% of viewers aged 18-25 are watching TV with subtitles, even without hearing impairments. It makes plots easier to follow and dialogue easier to process.

Best practice for social media has become best practice for all media — with “digestibility” of content now a core ingredient in the tentpole releases of streaming platforms.

Marketing takeaway: Focus on focus

So what does this mean for marketers?

Yes, we’re already talking about attention as a metric. But, deeper than that, we need to ask:

• Is your message clear and digestible, even when half-seen?

• Is your text legible at a glance — whether on a billboard or across a living room?

• Can someone glean your message while multitasking — or does it demand their undivided attention?

• Are you building distinctive assets? Colours, characters and sonic branding that cut through without conscious effort?

Because, in a world where attention is expensive, your message must be economical.

Forget debating whether this is creatively valid — this is the reality we face.

Sometimes people will have time for your messaging. But, increasingly often, people will not.

Maybe it’s time to focus on that.

Phil Rowley is head of futures at Omnicom Media Group UK and author of Hit the Switch: The Future of Sustainable Business. He writes a monthly column for The Media Leader about the future of media