{"id":10725,"date":"2026-01-21T18:55:23","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T00:55:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/?p=10725"},"modified":"2026-01-21T18:55:23","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T00:55:23","slug":"marketing-learned-how-to-grab-attention-but-forgot-what-to-do-with-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/?p=10725","title":{"rendered":"Marketing learned how to grab attention, but forgot what to do with it"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I remember seeing the famous Dollar Shave Club commercial \u201cOur Blades are F***ing Great<\/a>\u201d for the first time. Someone walked up to my desk and said, \u201cYou have got to see this.\u201d It\u2019s certainly absurd, but that was the point. It got the point across\u00a0 \u2014\u00a0 \u201cDollar Shave Club\u2019s razors are better, cheaper and easier to get than competitors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Within two days, Dollar Shave Club had 12,000 orders and crashed their servers. Within three years, they hit $152 million in revenue. In 2016, Unilever bought them for $1 billion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t realize it at the time, but I was watching the birth of something new and misunderstood: the attention economy.<\/p>\n

Learning the wrong lesson<\/h2>\n

After the ad went viral, I saw hundreds of copycats. None worked.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To quote Basher from \u201cOcean\u2019s 13,\u201d \u201cYou don\u2019t run the same gag twice. You do the next gag.\u201d Marketers tried and failed because they learned the wrong lesson.<\/p>\n

Dollar Shave Club\u2019s ad worked because it used novelty to cut through the noise, letting a single, concrete claim hit the viewer. The comedy was just a delivery mechanism.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dig deeper: Why CreativeOps and MOps can\u2019t survive independently<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Marketing, however, got a simpler takeaway\u00a0 \u2014\u00a0 grab attention at all costs. Over the next decade, all the training, tools and incentives tried to do just that, and mostly failed. They lost the second half of the equation \u2014 having something credible and valuable to say once you got attention. Clearly, that matters more than most teams realize.<\/p>\n

The credibility gap<\/h2>\n

In the past three months, dozens of people have pitched me on writing a book. They use the same stat in their pitch \u2014 that when you have \u201cauthor\u201d next to your name, it\u2019s easier to get attention from your target audience because the author title gives you credibility. That scares me.\u00a0<\/p>\n

People hire ghostwriters to buy credibility with their good writing and clear thinking. The existence of so many ghostwriting companies shows that many people and companies recognize that a lack of credibility is a problem. It shows that customers no longer respond to attention-grabber ads like they used to. It also shows that marketers must prepare for the next \u201ceconomy\u201d\u00a0 \u2014\u00a0 the trust economy.<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t buy credibility<\/h2>\n

When too many people fight for customer attention, and too few have something valuable to say, marketers double down on buying credibility. But when everyone has \u201cauthor,\u201d or any other manufactured title, next to their name, the title becomes meaningless.<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t buy credibility. And borrowed credibility doesn\u2019t store well. It expires quickly under scrutiny.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Credibility must be earned through experience. There\u2019s a difference between 10 years of marketing experience and one year repeated 10 times.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Attention still matters. Novelty and humor still matter. But the next phase of marketing won\u2019t reward eyeballs as much as it will reward those who are still trustworthy once attention is won. That\u2019s a shift many of the marketing teams I\u2019ve worked with aren\u2019t preparing for.<\/p>\n

Dig deeper: 3 brand mistakes that AI will keep amplifying in 2026<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Here are three rules that marketing teams can use to begin building credibility today.<\/p>\n

1: Use novelty to make usefulness unmistakable<\/h3>\n

In 2006, Microsoft partnered with comedian Demetri Martin for the rollout of Windows Vista, its next operating system. The campaign was clever, funny and well-funded. It got great numbers and won awards. It also failed to drive Windows Vista sales, and many users opted to stick with Windows XP.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When asked about the campaign, people remembered Demetri Martin, but not why Vista was better than XP. Dollar Shave Club used absurdity to get attention while making an important point. Novelty was a tool, not the point. Microsoft made novelty the goal and forgot that attention isn\u2019t the same as trust. They forgot that sales is the art of getting someone to trust you to solve their painful problems.\u00a0<\/p>\n

2: Never ship a claim you can\u2019t defend in a hostile room<\/h3>\n

A few minutes into a sales call, a founder said, \u201cOur customer retention is 90%.\u201d I knew it wasn\u2019t true. I\u2019ve reviewed retention data for sub-$10M companies for years. Numbers like that don\u2019t exist at that stage.<\/p>\n

So, I asked how they measured it. There was a pause, then a clarification, then the truth spilled out. Retention was closer to 20%. At that point, the meeting was effectively over. I doubt I was the only prospect who walked away that week.<\/p>\n

Not because the number was bad. Early-stage SaaS retention is ugly. It\u2019s because their claim couldn\u2019t stand up to basic examination. If they\u2019d tried to hide something this fundamental, then what else were they hiding?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how credibility works. You can\u2019t fake it. It\u2019s earned by knowing why something is true, because you\u2019ve stress-tested it against reality. In the credibility economy, every claim gets examined. And the ones that can\u2019t be defended disqualify you entirely.<\/p>\n

3: Don\u2019t pretend certainty you haven\u2019t earned<\/h3>\n

Last month, I got a LinkedIn message from a kid who wasn\u2019t old enough to drink, who promised in no uncertain terms \u201c5 conversations with qualified leads per week with your exact target audience.\u201d No context or conditions. Pure bravado. I ignored it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Regardless of age, anyone who\u2019s tried to book buyer conversations knows how many variables can blow that promise up. Those limits are learned by failing. He hadn\u2019t failed enough yet. Markets are very good at spotting that mismatch.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s far from alone. Plenty of people think that out-promising the competition will build confidence in their product or service. It does the opposite. It reduces trust.<\/p>\n

The alternative to bold claims isn\u2019t timid ones, it\u2019s credible ones. Credible operators don\u2019t make grand promises. They make precise ones. They know precisely what they can and can\u2019t do, and they\u2019re not afraid to share both.<\/p>\n

The coming correction<\/h2>\n

This is an uncomfortable time for marketing. I see teams who are very good at getting seen, but increasingly bad at being believed. They\u2019re optimized for attention while ignoring the credibility they\u2019ll need when people stop believing every claim they hear. That shift is already happening.<\/p>\n

Buyers are making fewer impulsive decisions. Sales cycles are longer and more thorough. Messaging that used to convert doesn\u2019t because it isn\u2019t credible.<\/p>\n

Dig deeper: What efficiency-first martech gets wrong about creativity<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

When markets tighten up and capital gets cautious, the margin for error disappears. Every purchase decision is vetted as if someone\u2019s career is at stake, because it probably is. Brands that can\u2019t explain where, when and why they\u2019re right are quietly and instantly disqualified.<\/p>\n

The teams that win in the future won\u2019t do it by being louder than everyone else. They\u2019ll do it because their claims survive under a microscope. Because they know attention can be rented, but credibility must be earned.<\/p>\n

When the market moves from rewarding attention to demanding credibility, will you know how to build it? Or have you been focused on attention for so long that you\u2019re not even sure where to start?<\/p>\n

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The post Marketing learned how to grab attention, but forgot what to do with it<\/a> appeared first on MarTech<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I remember seeing the famous Dollar Shave Club commercial \u201cOur Blades are F***ing Great\u201d for the first time. Someone walked up to my desk and said, \u201cYou have got to see this.\u201d It\u2019s certainly absurd, but that was the point. It got the point across\u00a0 \u2014\u00a0 \u201cDollar Shave Club\u2019s razors are better, cheaper and easier … <\/p>\n

Read more “Marketing learned how to grab attention, but forgot what to do with it”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/credibility-not-hype-800x443.png",0,0,false],"medium":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/credibility-not-hype-800x443.png",0,0,false],"medium_large":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/credibility-not-hype-800x443.png",0,0,false],"large":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/credibility-not-hype-800x443.png",0,0,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/credibility-not-hype-800x443.png",0,0,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/credibility-not-hype-800x443.png",0,0,false],"inspiro-featured-image":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/credibility-not-hype-800x443.png",0,0,false],"inspiro-loop":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/credibility-not-hype-800x443.png",0,0,false],"inspiro-loop@2x":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/credibility-not-hype-800x443.png",0,0,false],"portfolio_item-thumbnail":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/credibility-not-hype-800x443.png",0,0,false],"portfolio_item-thumbnail@2x":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/credibility-not-hype-800x443.png",0,0,false],"portfolio_item-masonry":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/credibility-not-hype-800x443.png",0,0,false],"portfolio_item-masonry@2x":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/credibility-not-hype-800x443.png",0,0,false],"portfolio_item-thumbnail_cinema":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/credibility-not-hype-800x443.png",0,0,false],"portfolio_item-thumbnail_portrait":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/credibility-not-hype-800x443.png",0,0,false],"portfolio_item-thumbnail_portrait@2x":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/credibility-not-hype-800x443.png",0,0,false],"portfolio_item-thumbnail_square":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/credibility-not-hype-800x443.png",0,0,false]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10725\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}