Paid Attention

Ever been on a roller coaster? They tend to hold your attention well. Slowly scaling great heights, then wonderful views, sharp unexpected turns, fast paced, and great fun. Faris's book is a roller coaster of a book - full of ideas on ideas, it held my attention at every turn. Packed full of theories and evidence to weigh and consider, this is the advertising/communications/ideas book of the year.

In today's global, 24/7, hyper-connected environment, our attention is the most prized commodity. New media call for new approaches to strategic communication. Drawing upon a rich and highly interdisciplinary body of scholarship on the links between cognition, symbolic expression and behavior, Paid Attention is a primer for the praxis of persuasion in the 21st century. Clearly fluent in both academic research and marketplace realities, Faris Yakob offers a welcome bridge between theory and practice. Scholars and professional communicators alike should pay attention.

Paid Attention is a must read for anyone struggling to understand media's changing relationship with consumers in a world being transformed by digital. Funny and provocative, and packed full of great examples, it'll get you thinking differently, whether you're an advertising professional or a media entrepreneur trying to reposition your business to take on the next generation of opportunities.

Reading this book felt a little like intellectual pinball as I was bounced between the worlds of psychology, philosophy, economics and advertising history: always entertaining while also sometimes genuinely profound. At a time when almost every pundit seems to be questioning whether advertising has a future, Faris is offering some answers.

In the digital age and beyond, marketers can no longer buy attention. That means how we define strategy, creative ideas, media, and even the role of the consumer has to change. Faris Yakob has spent a career writing and speaking about these topics. Few thinkers better understand the challenges that confront marketers, advertisers and agencies in the years to come. Finally, we have his knowledge --captured in a clear, logical text that offers readers an understanding of the recent changes, and what we can do to prosper.