New ways of thinking about marketing - by Pete Cashmore

The Web Economy = Trust + Attention

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The problem: people assume that money is the web’s primary currency. But the web trades in other currencies: trust and attention.

Trust is the confidence we place in individuals and brands. I’d suggest it’s the highest form of currency in human societies: extremely hard to build and remarkably easy to lose (see Chris Brogan’s Trust Agents).

Attention, meanwhile, is the currency of abundance. In a post-scarcity world where billions of web pages cry out for my attention every second of the day, paying attention to you is a gesture that says “you matter to me” (see Jeff Jarvis’ What Would Google Do, among others).

Twitter ads steal attention and destroy trust. That’s the exact opposite of what we need.

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Advertisers: Add Value, Don’t Interrupt!

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How do brands get their messages across if not by interrupting us? They need to become agents of trust, too.

Dell is making millions by posting special offers to its Twitter followers. Blendtec increased blender sales 5x by turning its ads into entertainment. Comcast joins the conversation simply by asking “how can I help?”. Those are just three examples from the hundreds we’ve posted in recent years.

Brands need to befriend us, build relationships, and offer so much value that we broadcast our positive experiences out to our own networks of trust. They might entertain us. They might help us. They might become enablers of our own personal goals. And when they do, we’ll return the favor. “Spend your attention on this”, we’ll say, “it’s important!”