Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Key Takeaways
- Brands have always been focused on getting more of people’s attention, but now people want a reason to put their phones down.
- Instead of asking, “How do I get people to spend more time with my brand?” ask, “How can my brand help people spend their time better?”
- In-person events can build stronger relationships than online engagement alone. Events, clubs, classes and recurring rituals can turn audiences into genuine communities.
- Social media, email and digital marketing still work. But we’re entering a period where attention is so constantly being fought over that protecting it can become part of the experience a brand provides.
For most of my career in marketing, brands have been obsessed with one thing: getting more of people’s attention. More time on your website. More email opens. More engagement. More content. More notifications. More reasons for someone to pick up their phone and interact with your brand.
But lately, I think we’re starting to see people crave the exact opposite. They want a reason to put their phones down.
We’re seeing people get excited about analog hobbies again. Dinner parties. Run clubs. Book clubs. Mahjong nights. Crafting. In-person events. Even phone-free experiences where the whole point is that you aren’t documenting every second of what you’re doing.
And I think there is a much bigger lesson here for entrepreneurs and marketers. For years, we have been asking, “How do I get people to spend more time with my brand?”
Maybe the better question now is: “How can my brand help people spend their time better?”
We have enough content
I say this as someone who owns a PR and marketing agency and is constantly telling brands they need content. They do. But we also need to acknowledge the obvious: People are drowning in it.
There is always another Reel to watch. Another email to open. Another podcast to listen to. Another brand telling you to follow, subscribe, click or buy. And now AI has made it possible to create even more content, even faster.
I don’t think the answer is simply to make more. I think brands have an opportunity to create experiences that people actually want to be present for.
That might sound counterintuitive. Why would a brand want someone to put their phone away when that person could be posting about the experience?
Because sometimes an experience becomes more valuable when it isn’t designed around being shared. If you create something genuinely interesting, people will probably talk about it later anyway.
Stop designing every experience for Instagram
I’ve worked on brand events for years, and somewhere along the way, we started designing a lot of experiences backward.
What’s the photo moment?
Where’s the logo?
What will influencers post?
What’s the hashtag?
Those things can absolutely matter. But sometimes we’re so focused on creating the content that will come out of an experience that we forget about the actual experience.
Was it fun?
Did people meet someone new?
Did they learn something?
Did they stay longer than they expected?
Would they have wanted to be there if they weren’t allowed to post a single photo?
That last question is one I think more brands should ask. Imagine hosting a dinner where phones aren’t on the table. A class that requires people to actually participate. A club that meets every month. A small event where the goal isn’t to get 200 pieces of social content, but to get 30 people to genuinely love being there.
The reach might look smaller on paper. The impact might be much bigger.
Scarcity isn’t only about products
Marketers understand scarcity when it comes to products. Limited drops work. Exclusive access works. Invitations work.
But we don’t talk as much about scarcity when it comes to attention. Being completely unavailable for a few hours is starting to feel like a luxury.
Think about how rare it is to go to dinner without checking your phone. To spend two hours doing something without taking a picture. To be somewhere without knowing what everyone else is doing at the same time.
Brands can create spaces for that. That doesn’t mean every company needs to start locking up customers’ phones at the door. It means we should start thinking beyond digital engagement when we’re trying to build relationships.
A skincare company can host a monthly walking club. A restaurant can create a recurring dinner series where strangers sit together. A fashion brand can teach people how to mend or customize clothing. A local business can create a club around something its customers already care about.
The activity doesn’t always have to center around selling the product. In fact, sometimes it’s better if it doesn’t.
Give people a reason to come back
One-off events are great for buzz. But I think the bigger opportunity is ritual.
This is something I keep coming back to in marketing.
People like having somewhere to go. They like becoming a regular. They like recognizing people. They like being part of something where eventually they know the rules, the jokes and the other people in the room.
That’s when an audience starts becoming an actual community. And no, creating a hashtag and calling your customers a community does not make them one.
Community happens when people would still want to interact with each other even if your brand stopped talking. For entrepreneurs, this doesn’t have to require a huge experiential marketing budget. Start small.
Ask yourself what your customers already enjoy doing. Then find a way to bring 10 or 20 of them together around it. Make it good enough that they want to come back. Then do it again.
Don’t immediately worry about scaling it. Some things become valuable precisely because they don’t scale perfectly.
Attention might be the wrong goal
I’m certainly not suggesting brands abandon social media, email or digital marketing. Those tools are how many people will discover you in the first place. The opportunity is what happens next.
Maybe someone finds your running club on Instagram and then spends Saturday morning running with 30 people instead of scrolling.
Maybe they see your dinner series on TikTok and then spend three hours talking to strangers.
Maybe they discover a class through an influencer and then spend the evening learning something they’ve never done before.
In those situations, digital marketing did its job. It got someone off digital.
I think we’re entering a period where people’s attention is so constantly being fought over that protecting it can actually become part of the experience a brand provides.
The brands that understand this won’t necessarily disappear from our phones. They’ll just give us something worth putting them down for.
Key Takeaways
- Brands have always been focused on getting more of people’s attention, but now people want a reason to put their phones down.
- Instead of asking, “How do I get people to spend more time with my brand?” ask, “How can my brand help people spend their time better?”
- In-person events can build stronger relationships than online engagement alone. Events, clubs, classes and recurring rituals can turn audiences into genuine communities.
- Social media, email and digital marketing still work. But we’re entering a period where attention is so constantly being fought over that protecting it can become part of the experience a brand provides.
For most of my career in marketing, brands have been obsessed with one thing: getting more of people’s attention. More time on your website. More email opens. More engagement. More content. More notifications. More reasons for someone to pick up their phone and interact with your brand.
But lately, I think we’re starting to see people crave the exact opposite. They want a reason to put their phones down.
We’re seeing people get excited about analog hobbies again. Dinner parties. Run clubs. Book clubs. Mahjong nights. Crafting. In-person events. Even phone-free experiences where the whole point is that you aren’t documenting every second of what you’re doing.
This story originally appeared on Entrepreneur
