Carpe diem = live in the moments (the micro-moments) 

It’s no secret that our content consumption behavior has changed drastically in the past few years. With 4G that is mainstream and 5G technology that is about to kick in, we are gradually moving towards a full-mobile world. We are constantly tapping, clicking, swiping, and nowadays consumers in the U.S. spend an average of 4.7 hours every day on their smartphones, checking social media at least 35 times a day. So if we do the math, this is around 140 hours a month, almost 6 full days out of 30 that we spend looking at our lovely devices. On an annual basis, this brings us to almost 70 days. Incredibly scary numbers.

We are inundated with information, inputs, stimuli, and signals. Our attention span is literally the one of a goldfish and our short memory the one of a 1-year-old. So, in these fast-paced dynamics, organizations have a very short window to catch users’ attention and the whole phenomenon has brought us to a communication based on “micro-moments”.

Micro-Moments is a “new consumer behavior”, as termed by Google, that delivers your marketing message clearly and concisely in a way that is of interest to the consumers – all within a span of seconds (otherwise, they lose their attention and are onto the next article, post, etc.).

Micro-Moments also provides the right information to the customers when they need it. People generally make instant decisions on what to eat, which restaurant to choose, what to purchase, or where to go, and without even noticing we are part of this movement too.

What does it mean for us marketers

Well, this whole analysis is telling us one major thing: we have become the product of the new communication style and the outcome is a human behavior that is changing the way brands must work to capture buyers’ attention. In our day to day job, we always strive for the best human insights, the best visual design, the optimal copy, and the right channels, but sometimes we forget that the speed of communication is as important. Some of the guidelines from companies in the likes of Google, Instagram, FB etc, are informing us to front-load the pay-off of the message in the first 5” of the ads, to capture users’ interest and then tell the story in the remaining seconds of the video. But the reality is that the second part of the story is almost secondary and we as marketers are going to need to create engaging content and tell a full story in the initial time frame. Nowadays, we are not competing for just users’ attention but we are battling with other brands for users’ time. Thereby, time and speed of communication are crucial elements that we probably shouldn’t neglect in our channel/creative briefs moving forward. This process will hopefully allow us marketers to micro-moments that matter to our audience.