The brain, with its 100 billion neurons, wired together by more than 500 trillion connections, is considered the most sophisticated piece of equipment on the planet. It knows how to filter the barrage of messages received daily by filtering, ignoring, and then deciding in advance what’s worth noticing. Photo by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash.
“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
Nobel laureate Herbert Simon uttered that prophetic line in 1971.
That should be tattooed on every communicator’s forearm.
He said it decades before smartphones, social feeds, email marketing campaigns, YouTube, etc.
WAY before your customers started fielding thousands of messages daily.
The Brain: A Supercomputer
Here’s the irony — your customers aren’t working with limited hardware.
Each approximately four-pound brain runs on roughly 100 billion neurons, wired together by more than 500 trillion connections, all humming away 24/7 processing sight, sound, touch, taste and smell simultaneously.
It’s been referred to as the most sophisticated piece of equipment on the planet, and it’s sitting right there between their ears doing an unbelievable amount of work every second of every day.
Automaticity: The Communicator’s Obstacle
So why does it feel like it’s so challenging to get your message to land?
Because this supercomputer figured out a survival trick a long time ago.
It’s called automaticity.
Did you know automaticity is one of your top competitors? It may be a more serious competitor than those with a similar product or service.
Faced with too much information to consciously process, the brain routes almost everything to autopilot by filtering, ignoring, and then deciding in advance what’s worth noticing before you’re even aware a decision has been made.
It’s not laziness. It’s protection.
And it means the average message — yours included — never stands a chance of reaching conscious thought at all (i.e., getting the customer’s attention).
If the brain decides it’s just more noise, it’s deemed not worth noticing. Read this blog post on noise.
However, if your message is communicated in such a way to make it more attention-getting, engaging, and persuasive, it’s far less likely to be ignored
And that, my friends, is the benefit of working with a professional communicator trained at taking your message from noise to noticeable.
Let’s take a look at the tsunami of messages you’re competing with in modern times — all hoping to get noticed.
10 Mind-Boggling Demands On Customers’ Attention
Do you know how saturated our culture is with media messages?
I bet it’s far more than you may realize.
Here are just 10 mind-boggling demands on your customers’ attention:
- Hollywood – Hollywood film studios produce more than 700 hours of feature films annually. This adds to its base of more than 100,000 hours of films previously released. (Source: Media Literacy, 10th edition, by W. James Potter, SAGE Publications)
- TV Stations – Commercial television stations generate about 48 million hours of video messages annually worldwide. (Source: Media Literacy, 10th edition, by W. James Potter, SAGE Publications)
- Radio Stations – Radio stations transmit 65.5 million hours of original programming annually. (Source: Media Literacy, 10th edition, by W. James Potter, SAGE Publications)
- Books – UNESCO estimates roughly 2.2 million new book titles are published worldwide each year — more than 6,000 a day. (Source)
- Websites – There are now more than 1.4 billion websites worldwide, though only about 15% are active. (Source) Each of these websites has the potential to deliver an unlimited amount of information.
- YouTube – Part of the website explosion is video platforms like YouTube. YouTube users are uploading more than 500 new hours of video every minute daily — 720,000 hours a day. (Source) Fun fact: If you wanted to view every video uploaded to YouTube, it would take you an entire year of viewing (but only if you multitasked by watching 20 screens at a time).
- Internet – There are now more than 5.5 billion internet users worldwide, and they send more than 251 million emails every minute — over 360 billion a day. (Source 1, Source 2)
- Texting – More than 23 billion texts are sent daily worldwide. (Source)
- Instagram – During any given minute, Instagram users now post roughly 695,000 stories, up from 277,777 in 2018. (Source)
- Digital Info – The world created, captured, copied and consumed about 181 zettabytes of data in 2025 — nearly three times as much as in 2020. (Source)
According to the textbook Media Literacy:
“Not only are we already saturated with media messages, the number of messages available from the media continues to grow. More information has been generated since you were born than the sum total of all information throughout all recorded history up until the time of your birth. In 2012, [author Nate] Silver estimated that the amount of information was doubling every year. And the rate continues to accelerate! This means that today, over half of all the information that is available to you (in all the libraries, websites, recordings, etc.) did not exist one year ago.”
The 3 Big Takeaways
- Automaticity makes it difficult for your message to land.
- The demand on one’s attention is increasing exponentially, making it harder than ever to get your message noticed.
- If you’re not a trained communicator, consider hiring one.
How do you handle the daily bombardment of messages? Do share!
Stay authentic — as you work to be noticed amidst the barrage of daily messages!
Jeffery E. Pizzino, APR (seen here in a vintage photo circa 1983 serendipitously doing a Clash impersonation in a since-forgotten location) is a spin-free public relations pro who is passionate about telling the why of your story with clarity, impact and authenticity. He began his PR career in 1987 at Ketchum Public Relations in New York City but has spent the majority of his career as a solopreneur. He’s the Chief Authentic Officer of the Johnson City, TN-based public relations firm, AuthenticityPR. He also functions as the fractional CCO for his clients.
Jeff has an MBA in Management from Western International University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications — with an emphasis in PR — from Brigham Young University (rise and shout!). He’s also accredited in public relations (APR). This Milwaukee, Wisconsin native holds an Italian citizenship and plans to live and work there someday. Jeff and his storyteller wife Leticia have four children and four grandchildren. In his extremely limited nonwork hours, he studies Italiano, practices guitar, write songs, gardens, works out, disc golfs, reads, listens to New Wave music, serves as an assistant communication director in his church, watches BYU football, enjoys watching the original Mission Impossible TV series, and plays board games (mostly Dominion and Seven Wonders). No, this guy’s never bored and looking for something to do. Email Jeff.
