What Media Multi-tasking Really Means

I stumbled across this interesting chart on warc today:

'Screens to the nth – What People Are Doing and Why' IAB

There has been a lot of talk about media multi-tasking and how new technologies are driving efficiencies for consumers, but what this demonstrates is we are just trying to fit more into less time.  We are working more, we are consuming more media and somehow finding more time for leisure but because a day still is only twenty four hours we are doing it all at once. 

This begs the question - with our attention so divided how effective are we being?

Furthermore, as marketers, we can never count on having consumers undivided attention.  This poses an interesting challenge - how do we capture consumers attention in such a distracted world?

Email - Productivity tool or time waster?

A French company recently announced it was banning internal email and in typical French fashion, without a trace of irony, it is an IT company.

It an interesting experiment. Sure there is a certain amount of correspondence that needs to be documented [in our industry rate agreements, approvals, amendments], but the majority of these are external and even then probably don't account for more than a small fraction of the daily deluge.

Actual conversations are so important in an industry built on relationships. And unless you are a secretary on Mad Men, talking is immeasurably faster than typing.

So, before you send that email, pick up the phone, or go for a stroll. Have a chat and let serendipity take its course. Some of the best ideas come from an idle chat around the photocopier...