Anti-Attention Resistance
by Mandisa Helm, Design Strategist at Etch
GEN Alpha are aware of the transactional relationship between the people who feed them content online and those people's intention and need to make money.
Millennials shop with considered intent - comfortable in-store and online, they seek out brand authority and a clear values story before committing. Gen Z move faster and almost entirely digitally, led by peer validation and cultural moment over brand loyalty. Gen Alpha are growing up in a world where the line between content and commerce has dissolved entirely - for them, shopping will simply be a natural extension of the environments they already live in.
Similarly to how Gen Z will have once felt about traditional TV, what was once viewed by many Millennials as novel - the transition from going from black and white to colour, Christmas specials, being able to see world events live, for Gen-Zers is entirely commonplace. Friday night telly is chocka full of ads, sponsors and product placements. A couple of hours of watching your favourite non-BBC broadcaster and you’ll have consumed a boatload of subliminal influences, and if you’re watching Prime, downright targeted advertisements (has anyone bought their washing-up liquid via a TV link yet?). Whilst for many Millennials, in the back of their mind this may lead to them on their Monday morning Sainsbury’s run picking up the more expensive detergent they now associate with their favourite retired England footie player or because they quite liked that former I’m A Celeb contestant, purely down to marketing - Gen Z are aware of this, they are cynics, they famously ‘Broke the Marketing' funnel.
Well, a similar thing can be said about the awareness that Gen Alphas have with their relationship to online culture, but with a much different reaction. Just like Gen-Z, they have never known any different. They are actually aware that with pretty much every medium they spend their time on, consuming content, they are being sold to. #ad #spon #founder be damned, whether the promotional content is being called out or not, Gen Alpha are aware that they are either being directly sold to or being drawn into an ecosystem to eventually be influenced or sold to. They are aware of the power their attention has - the transparency is clear, founders have been telling them through founder-led content, streamers have been telling them every time they’ve felt the power of paying a streamer to do whatever they want at the click of a button. They are either acutely or subconsciously aware that their attention has value. And they lean into it -
So whereas most GenZ have felt the heartbreak of their favourite influencer being cancelled and not ‘who they thought they were’ via a parasocial relationship and the trust being broken. For Gen-Alpha, that trust isn't required when it is established as surface-level transactional, because it was never there to begin with.
So if there isn’t trust required between brands + consumers, the parasocial relationships developed by millennials/GenZ is less prevalent for Gen Alpha, and they have an understanding of their power as a consumers, this is likely to result in them giving their attention - but not for long - as they will have developed a deepened level of resistance to the attention economy having being brought up in it.
Now, if you think this is starting to sound like the never-ending core mechanisms of ‘the attention economy’ that we have been aware of, in some way, you are correct; it now often feels like an unavoidable attachment in modern society. But this could be reductionist in its thinking, because in tandem with this understanding of the meta mechanisms of the marketing funnel, Gen Alphas typically also have a heightened awareness of people - and they care.
They care about the planet, they care about their prospects, they care about their lack of communities and everything in between.
So if brands want to actually navigate and create a playbook that encompasses their next generation of individuals, they must factor in and combine their intrinsic awareness and care-factor.
Shifting the need for authenticity from brands themselves (founder-led content, transparent process, etc.) to authenticity towards the things that Gen Alpha cares about. Grabbing their attention in a way that resonates with them. Giving them a reason to want to rent their attention to you, leading to potential further consumption, and them exercising their purchasing power.
We will be translating this insight on the next generation of people and youth culture and deep diving into how this translates into brand marketing playbooks and specifically retail design.
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