Past Writings Review – 1
Over the past few months, I have written extensively about how most marketing messages sent by brands are ignored (attention recession) and possible solutions for attention messaging (a micro-currency for attention and a dedicated inbox for such messages):
Microns and Loyalty: Gamifying and Rewarding Attention: “There is a very interesting opportunity to build a loyalty program which monetises attention via microns by building a two-sided platform: connecting brands and consumers. It needs to have two components: the earn (how consumers can get the reward points) and the burn (how can they redeem these points). The innovative format of microns (short, informational, identified content) combined with a multi-brand loyalty program can lay the foundation for a big breakthrough in brand-customer engagement via the most ubiquitous identity that customers have – their email address. Such a program could, in short order, become the world’s largest loyalty program.”
Micronbox: A New Inbox: “[Imagine the future.] Each of us has a micronbox. It is built on email so it doesn’t necessarily need a new app or identity. This new inbox collates all the microns from our Gmail inbox and organises them better. No microns from a brand which we have not subscribed to make it through. Only a single email from a brand is present – older, unread mails get layered together into that single email. Thus, the micronbox only has as many emails as brands we subscribe to. Microns that we read are automatically deleted unless we choose to save them for future reference… The micronbox is clutter-free. Instead of a ‘delete’ mindset when dealing with emails, there is a ‘delight’ feeling as we scan it. Brands have become friends whose messages are never ignored, read promptly and always acted on. Brands provide us useful info which make daily life better. They offer us what we need rather than what they want. They learn from our actions to make the relationship better daily with every interaction.”
Imagining Mus: An Attention-Action Currency: “Mus are points that are earned by consumers for actions done in their engagement with brands. Initially, Mus are earned within microns: opening a micron, clicking a link, filling a survey, referrals to family and friends. Later, they could be extended beyond microns – clicking on SMSes or push notifications, downloading an app, completing a profile to share personal information with a brand, and so on. Mus are a transfer from a brand to consumers. Mus are thus earned by consumers. They can be spent on rewards or gifted to others. As the use of Mus expand, they can become currency – a medium of exchange.”
Micron-verse: Making It Happen: “There are many components that come together to make the micron-verse of [the future] a reality: messages, microns, micronbox, mu and MyToday. Taken together, these 5 elements help us construct the new world of brand-customer communications and engagement… Micron-verse, over time, can be like a good game that is played on and on by millions daily. It offers us useful information packaged with exciting rewards for the one resource we cannot increase – our time. We live in a world of brands and messages – that’s never going away. If anything, the volume of ‘ads’ we see has increased exponentially. So why not invite the ads in our life – invertising, if you will. Let brands bid for our time – they are anyways vying for our attention on platforms like Google and Facebook. Why not let them do it in our inbox and make the payments directly to us?.. A world with less waste – our attention, brand spends – should be a better place.”
