#H2HChat: The Science of Capturing People's Attention with Ben Parr

Hey, everybody. How are you doing? This is Bryan Kramer. We are back with another H2H Chat. Kind of excited about today, as we have an incredible guest. I'm talking to Ben Parr. I'll do a formal introduction in just a second, but I just wanted to make sure that everybody is doing well today, you guys are having a great summer. And actually, it's coming to a close here for those of you who have kids that have kids that are starting school, it's about to get real, and I know that to be true because I've got one of those, or a couple of those too. So here we go, let's get started. We've got another amazing guest on today on H2H Chat. If you would like to follow along, if you're new to H2H Chat, you can follow on Twitter at #H2HChat. It's that simple, and all you have to do is just throw out a couple questions, a couple comments. You can tweet as you go. The questions that you throw out will actually be used in the second half of this chat, meaning I'm going to choose your questions and pose those back to Tony Stark here, or Ben Parr, as he goes by his pseudonym name, and we'll be chatting about those questions later on. I'll let you know that comes about halfway through the show. Keep those questions coming, and we will take them as they come. Awesome. All right, without further ado, I am here with Ben Parr. Ben is an award-winning journalist, entrepreneur, investor, keynote speaker, and expert on growth and attention. He has my attention, at least for now. Is his name really Tony Stark? He is a general partner at Dominate Fund, an early-stage— not early age, well, he could be early age— venture— early-stage venture capital firm, and the author of bestselling book Captivology. So it's like our books are brothers from other mothers since I wrote Shareology. His book is about the science of capturing people's attention, named the top marketing business book of 2015 by Strategy Business Magazine. He's the curator of Tech Caucus, of which I am a subscriber, a happy subscriber. Thank you so much. It's a weekly newsletter that anonymously— that means no one knows How they do the polls, and the polls come from the leaders of the tech industry. He's a growth and marketing advisor to Lufthansa. I can always say that never airlines. Ustream acquired by IBM, Rebel Mouse, AngelHack, and other other other brands, other really big brands. He is a columnist for Inc. magazine and co-host over Subscribed, a weekly podcast, and. He is also known for being the co-editor and editor-at-large of Mashable and Calmness for CNET. I could keep going on and on because his bio is incredible. Ben, how are you doing? I mean, Tony, how are you doing today?

I'm doing fantastic. How about yourself?

Doing great. Doing great. Happy Monday.

It's great to be a billionaire playboy philanthropist.

Yes. I was going to ask you how that feels. Thanks for offering up the, uh, The feeling. How does it feel to be Iron Man?

Well, it's— you get sore every once in a while because you get knocked around by Thanos and such. But when that's not happening, it's quite a great lifestyle, I have to admit.

I bet. I bet. I just hope nobody blows up your house. That would suck.

Don't remind me. That wasn't a fun time.

So let's talk a little bit about you. Let me start with the obvious question. We'll start with the good stuff. There goes the title and the name again. You may see his title and name change, what, 8 times throughout this, as I've been told?

I promised you 10 times.

Oh, 10 times. 10 times. I keep going.

It's happened once. There are 9 more times.

9 more, and maybe there's a bonus, we don't know.

Yeah, unfortunately you told me about this feature and I'm going to abuse it. It's part of my personality.

Good. Well, let me tell you about another feature. Because this is called the H2H Chat, if you say the word human, that happens. So don't be surprised if you use the word human. Now other people, other friends of yours like Bryan Solis, Jeremiah Owang and Robert Scoble have put the word human to death, and I was clapping a lot. So feel free to use it as much or as little as you would like.

All right.

So let me let me start with a with a with a little bit about you and just ask you to share with us things that aren't in your bio, something that we don't know about you. What is it? What is it that's missing from your bio that we don't know about you?

Oh, that's a good way to open it up. You ask good questions. I think it's just the personal— like, there's— every bio has a little bit of me. Things, you know, like my interests of scuba diving and skiing. Like, okay, here's an example. I'm a Thai citizen as well as US. I don't put it in all my bios, but I have a home in Thailand. I try to go to Thailand if I can every year.

Wow. And why— you have a home and you have family there?

I have family. I'm half Thai. So I became a Thai citizen several years ago. You have the right as a son or daughter of a Thai citizen to be a citizen, but you got to go through a long process to do it.

Wow, interesting. So how long have you lived here, or were you born here?

I was born and raised in small-town Illinois. Corn, pigs, soybean, cows. I had a very Midwestern, rural, very white upbringing.

Wow. And tell me, how is business different there than it is here?

In every way. I mean, like, aside tangent, it's part of why we're seeing the division of this kind of election. It's a different kind of world. I mean, I grew up— it was a fantastic childhood. Boy Scouts, camping, driving around with friends. Such different than city life, you know. I left it behind because I love living in San Francisco. I love cities like Chicago and New York. I'm more of a city person than I am a rural person. But I do miss just like opening a door and walking through the woods, which, you know, one of the lucky things of living in San Francisco is that you have You have Muir Woods and you have Great Woods nearby.

Absolutely. And so you get the diversity, which is awesome. And you live in San Francisco, but you have— have you lived in other places?

Croatia. Let's see, a couple other places. Croatia, Chicago, a little bit in Thailand. Mostly I say now I live in airplanes though.

Great, and hopefully that's Lufthansa.

Well, Lufthansa, whenever I can. As you already mentioned, I sit on their advisory board.

Right. Okay, well, let's dive into your book a little bit, Captivology.

All right.

All right, so the science of capturing people's attention. Give us, like, just background as to why you wrote this book. Why this book and not any other book?

So I've had book offers over the years, but what kind of happened was, let's see, my background being what I was, an editor at Mashable, I eventually left. I started investing in early-stage companies through my venture fund, and what I realized was all the companies were asking me for help in press, marketing, customer and user acquisition, virality, attention, all these key areas of how do you capture, maintain, and grow attention. And I realized that this was a topic that I, if I wanted to help my companies, I needed to research deeper. And it just became more and more interesting as I did that. Eventually it came to a point where I realized like this was something that needed to be turned into a book because there's been a lot of scientific research done in attention and memory over the last 300 years, but nobody really put it into something that the public could consume despite the fact that attention is the fundamental currency of the modern economy. Without attention, nothing gets done. Without attention, nothing gets done. Thank you. I was wondering because it's like, are you not hearing me because of Wi-Fi or something? But seeing it consistently happen, it's— there's a consistent difficulty, not just in paying attention, just the amount of information being brought to us. We're not equipped because in 1986, the average human being was exposed to 44 newspapers worth of information. By 2006, that number had quadrupled to 176 newspapers. And last year, Microsoft Research gave me these numbers. The average human being was exposed to 7 DVDs worth of information daily. Wow. So there's just been this exponential increase, like, and yet we have the same 24 hours in a day. And that was kind of the reason why I did the book.

So tell me a little bit about— in the book you talk through the 3 stages of attention. Can you give us a summary of the 3 stages?

All right.

As a TV personality, I think you should be able to do that.

I'm sorry, I'm just so excited by that bottom third. That's what I was thinking.

There's no more than 10, I just have a feeling.

So the 3 stages of attention. Or go— so here's how I describe it. I describe attention like a bonfire. Attention is not this on-off switch that most people think of it as. It goes in stages. And so my research showed that there were 3 stages: immediate attention, which is our automatic and visceral reaction to certain sights, sounds, and stimuli. You know, if I go— A loud sound, you might suddenly react, and it's a subconscious mechanism to protect us from danger. And that's immediate attention's role, to protect us from danger. If there's a bad smell, if there's a loud sound, if there's a bright yellow and black bug flying at you, you know to run away. You know that you need to defend yourself. You know you need to pay attention. Then you get into the next stage of attention. Immediate attention goes to short attention. And short attention is our conscious attention. It's when we focus on Finishing a test or playing a game, you know, opening up Pokémon Go, whatever it might be. And then it goes to long attention. Now before I go, short attention is controlled by this amazing system called working memory, and it's the short-term memory system of the brain. And it helps direct how our attention behaves and more importantly what goes into long-term memory. And the big goal here, and the big thing I want to stress, is that attention and memory are intrinsically linked. You cannot pay attention if you did not remember. And so your goal is to get people to remember. And so that's where the 3rd stage of attention, long attention, comes in. That's our long-term interest in something. It's the difference between you have like, like a phone company advertising to you nonstop versus you lining up for a new Apple product because you become a fan, because you become loyal, because now it's not you going out for attention. It's you going— it's them coming to you. It's the opposite, you know. And that's long attention. And I think that's the most important. And so you build it up like a bonfire. Bonfire starts with a spark, a kindling, the spark and the ignition. It goes to the kindling. That's short attention. And then it goes to the big logs that go off all night. That's long attention.

I think we're going to have to come up with a sound for the word attention because that's being said so much.

I know

that's going to be a good word for today.

So wait, I hear that if I say the word human, Something will happen? OK. I had to know. Awesome. Awesome.

We'll see.

Do I abuse that more, or do I abuse the lower third more? I don't know.

This is the question.

We'll find out.

And will we be paying attention?

There is such a thing as sensory overload. I am worried that the more I do these lower third changes, the more people will not be paying attention to me, will be paying attention to the lower third, but I can't help myself. I'm like a little kid at a playground. There's only so much willpower I have.

I can see that. This is going to be a great interview. Let me ask you this, with the noise level, the volume, the sheer volume that we've got in the world, What is the— what is your advice? What's your opinion on the ways that we can cut through the clutter?

So I don't think of it as much noise as much as it is just a sheer amount of information being put at us. And so we feel like we have to yell in order to rise above the noise. And the honest truth is that you don't have to. And in fact, The yelling and the like, or that's the look at me, me, me, me kind of era doesn't actually capture attention for that long. You'll totally pay attention for a short amount of time, but there has to be something more substantial. And so what I came up with in the book, what I found was what I called the captivation triggers. And these are 7 scientific triggers that capture our attention at every stage. And they capture our attention. At a fundamental psychological level, regardless of whether you are a— what country or what industry, they're fundamental to human nature and thus they work across the spectrum.

Okay, so give us one. What's one way that we can do that?

So let's start with the first one, automaticity. It's the fact that we pay attention to certain sensory inputs more than others. As an example, Bryan, if you're a hitchhiker on the side of the road and you want to have the best chance of being picked up, what color shirt do you think you should wear?

I'm going to go with orange.

Orange? I thought you were going to say no shirt.

Ah,

no, that's not the answer actually, funny enough. I'm sure though that would actually work, but that works for a different scientific reason I'll explain in a little bit. So there was a French scientist who did a study on this, and what he found was that on average It's gen— the answer is it's gender-specific. If you're a man, any bright color works— orange, neon, yellow— because they have high contrast with the ground and the surroundings. And so our eyes automatically pay attention to anything that has a high contrast. It's automatic, and scientifically, we just— our eyes gravitate towards high contrast, just like a bright light in a dark room. But there's also associations that really matter. So when they did this test with women, What they found was on average women were picked up about 13% of the time unless they were wearing the color red, in which case they were picked up nearly double, 21% of the time. And that's because of our subconscious associations we have with red and romanticism. In fact, if you just put a thick red border around a person's face, the opposite gender rate that person as more attractive. It's a subconscious automatic kind of thing. We have unconscious associations with different colors and sights and stimuli that affect the way in which we pay attention.

You've got a slew of great tweets coming in here. Obviously everybody here is paying attention, so I'm having a hard time paying attention between what they're saying and what you're saying, but I'm kidding, of course. Anyway, the ability to cut through the clutter Is something that anybody can do, that somebody with no followers, with no social media presence, could they cut through the clutter at a great level?

Cutting through the clutter, anyone— so here's what I'm trying to say. Anyone can do it. It's just a matter of the techniques in which you use. One thing I like to tell everybody is that that it's good to court attention for the right cause and the right ideas, because you have to in the modern era. It's not possible to just build something and expect people to come, which is part of the advent of social media. Social media helps cause the problem, but it's also part of the solution to the problem. You have to use it in order to break through the noise. But the question is, like, are you just posting An RSS feed of latest articles where I was looking at someone else's this morning of horoscopes for Gemini. I didn't even understand. Or are you creating content people actually want, or as a part of a bigger trigger, content that violates their expectations of the world?

Is there an ROI on attention?

In what way do you mean ROI?

Is there any kind of return on money that you might spend?

Well, absolutely, because you can't make money without people's attention. They have to pay attention to listen to your pitch, to hear about your company, to hear about your product. There is no— like, I have not done a specific— created a specific measure. I have been asked to do this, and I've still been pondering how do you create a specific ROI for attention. A specific metric, but that said, attention clearly translates into dollars, into sales. Without attention and focused attention, it's— you have nothing. Again, attention and memory are intrinsically linked. But I've been trying to figure out, and maybe you have an idea of how you would create an ROI specifically for attention, because there are certain ones that exist on the internet, things like time on page and page views and things like that. But I think we can do better than that, especially in the real world.

Yeah, well, just in my world, the only way that I've been able to quantify it is through influence, specifically influencers, especially when influencers are under the rule of Jack Sparrow. But that said, when they have You can't

concentrate at my beautiful hat.

God darn it. I'm trying, but every time you change that, I'm like, oh. Anyway, the influencer programs, like what we do with larger companies, when they have an influencer program, we can track the volume of shares that they put out down to the potential purchase of a product. And that's attention right there. But on the greater world volume of information, like when you worked at Mashable, how did you capture and quantify attention?

Well, at Mashable you would quantify it through the page views and through how long people stayed on site. But the bigger and more important one, I think, for not just a publication like Mashable but for everybody Is return visits, is loyalty, is loyal users. When I'm looking at companies to invest in, especially consumer ones— well, both consumer and enterprise— I care less about the number of daily actives. I care less about the number of total users, and I care more about the daily active and the daily monthly, and especially the return. What percentage come back? After that initial meeting, that's where real attention is made or real attention is really measured. Because you can get someone to pay attention once, or you think they did, but does that convert into long attention? That's the big question.

Right, right. Okay, so long attention is where the ROI exists. Would you agree with that?

Yes, exactly. Apologies, I have a little button here on my microphone. It goes back and forth. Yes, exactly.

Okay. All right. Also in your book, and maybe even the majority of your book, you talk about triggers.

Yes.

Let's dive into triggers. Just for sake of definition for everyone out there, give everyone an idea as to what kinds of triggers you're talking about, and then we can dive into maybe a few of them.

There are 7 triggers in my book. I'll list them off. I highly suggest this great book that everyone can read if they want to understand the science of attention. Sorry, I had— I'm required legally by HarperCollins to do plugs. They are automaticity, framing, disruption, reward, reputation, mystery, and acknowledgement. And those are the 7 that you have to use in order to capture attention across all 3 stages.

I'd like to acknowledge what you just said.

You're doing a good job already.

See that? So I jumped to the last one. But triggers in general, life is built on triggers. We are an abundance of triggers. One thing happens, another thing takes over. How did you come up with your 7? Not 8, not 6. Where did the 7 come from?

Well, the 7 came from the research. There was an imprecise science in some ways to this, but it very clearly demonstrated to me that these 7 categories, these 7 triggers, were the 7. And a lot of other categories people would propose fall within the 7. It's kind of a matter of how— what triggers capture what attention at what stages, you know? There's only so many triggers that really do captivate us. And I tried to just distill it to as few as I could possibly, and to as clear of categories as much as I could.

And do you have a favorite?

Favorite? Favorite? No, it depends on the stage, but I will say disruption is the most fun of all the triggers because that's the one where you get to do the crazy stuff if you do it right.

Okay, so give us an example, maybe a prime example of— because I would imagine you can use a couple triggers, you don't have to just use one, you can use 2, 3, 4, Maybe have you seen one that used all of them?

Well, so here's the big thing about the triggers. You don't need to— you never use all of them at one time for one campaign because you're not trying— you have to know what stage of attention are you trying to capture. For example, automaticity is a great tool for capturing immediate attention. Disruption, the fact that we pay attention to things that violate our expectations, is the tool for short attention. And mysteries and acknowledgement are tools for long attention. And each one is a different trigger for a different stage. You're going to mix and match, but it would be really hard for a single campaign to use all 7. It's doable, but you don't have to is the big thing. Pick the stage of attention that you're trying to capture and really hone in on that and the triggers that capture it, you know.

Okay, so give us a campaign example that you saw that really used triggers well.

Hmm. So I talk about a couple of examples in the book, like advertising campaigns. I really like what the Old Spice campaign did. Well, let's pick one maybe. Why don't I actually tell you about one that failed and I'll explain why.

Great.

So do you remember Quiznos?

Yes.

I think they still have a few around.

Oh, yeah, yeah. They have them all over here.

So Quiznos, not exactly doing all that great, hasn't been. What happened years ago is they did this campaign. And what they had was these mutant-looking rodents— I could find pictures of them— singing about food, dancing next to your food. And it was just the most disgusting thing. I'm just like, why are you— like, you're trying to sell food. Why do you have rodents dancing around your food? Now, it does capture attention because it captures what I call the disruption trigger, because it violates your expectations of what's supposed to happen, but it does not convert into sales or long attention because it's not significant with the brand. It does not match. So think of it this way, Lil Wayne or Seth Rogen or something can say something off the wall or even racist or sexist, and it's sort of acceptable. acceptable-ish because of their brands. But if a major politician not named Donald Trump does that,

they

are out of office.

Hold on one sec. You still there?

I am here. Can you hear me?

All right. We're having a little bit of slowdown on the internet. Let's see if we can fix this with a setting.

The internet. Never wanting to play by the rules.

Okay, Maya can see you fine, so keep going.

All right, so I don't know what's happening there. There we go. So,

uh,

so look, look, for example, like everyone asks me about Trump. I even did a couple interviews with a couple newspapers about Trump and his rise. Uh, captures attention, disruption trigger, violates all our expectations of what a politician is supposed to do, but Now you're starting to see the consequences of that play out in the polls, because while it captures attention, it's not positive attention, the type of attention that you want as a presidential candidate. And so it's not adding up to a majority of votes right now. And so there's a two— there's like a two-edged— it's a two-edged sword or a two-edged knife to whenever you're trying to capture attention using the disruption trigger. Quiznos did it wrong. They did that campaign, it got attention, but it didn't convert into sales and they went bankrupt. We'll see if my theories hold by the end of the election or not, but so far they do.

Great. You're going to have to excuse me, the internet on my side is a little bit choppy, but I think everyone out there can see and hear you, so I'm just going to continue with the line of the questions.

Hey everyone, if you can see it, if you can see me, just tweet at me @BenPar. I'm going to put it instead of I Love Lamp. And if you have questions, shoot it to us in H2H chat, right?

Yes, please.

Yeah.

Fantastic. I've been capturing a few along the way here, so it's great. Perfect. What are we on now? We're on, I think, 5 or 6. Let's call it 6.

I lost count.

We'll call it 6. We'll call it 6. All right. So far, the lower thirds are winning over the hand clapping. Ben, so when you look at triggers, when you look at something, do you, do you see which trigger fits automatically, or is there a process to that?

For once you learn the triggers, it becomes— it starts becoming instinctual. The process is like you list out the triggers, and then you see it, and you see what your task is, and you figure out which stage of attention you need to capture. And then you pick the triggers based off of that. That's the primary way, but you kind of have an automatic sense of it. You do this a few times.

Great, great, great. Okay, so with just a couple minutes left, let's jump into— before we get into the questions, let's jump into some, just a few questions around journalism. Your background is in journalism, and you have a lot of obvious influence, and your career has been spent So where do you see journalism now? And next question I'll ask you in a second. Where is journalism? Where are we at with journalism? What's going on?

The answer is an inflection point, a transition point, and there's a lot of turmoil. John Oliver did a great piece recently on his show about it at newspapers where it's harder than ever. It is harder to do investigative journalism. But that said, publications like BuzzFeed have been hiring dozens of investigative journalists trying to pick up the slack. I do think that has dropped some, but I do think we've also gained more voices. There's a positive and negative to each side. One of the other negatives is that we've become more echo chamber, more listening to just one side. If you really don't believe the media, you can follow very specific websites. I'm not going to mention which ones for the news that you want, or your newsfeed will cater to that cause. So we're kind of getting more information, but a lot of times we're only getting one side or one piece of information. And I think that's like, it's becoming more like the simple answer to your question is it's becoming more personalized.

Okay. So now let's talk about the future. You kind of led into it a little bit. Where do you see journalism going in the next few years?

Well, I think journalism will become— well, I saw a couple of things. One, I think you will see more investment into journalism. from people like Jeff Bezos and from more of the, like, billionaire philanthropy side, which is good and bad. Good that it doesn't have to always just make a profit. Bad in the fact that it's controlled by a small group of people. I think you will see it become less human. Oh,

didn't expect it. Darn it. Just snuck that right in there, didn't you? You're only on 2, so you're not doing too well so far. I can't give you prizes for 2.

Oh, fine. I can keep on saying human if you really want me to. But see, I'm not going to just keep on saying that word over and over again.

No, I know. You have to sneak it in subtly.

Yeah, I'll sneak it in subtly. So where did we— where we left off, I was talking about humans so much. But okay, the future journalism will be less human. And more artificial intelligence.

Sorry.

Yeah, yeah, you can expect that. And you're gonna see more of the basic stuff done through AIs. And I think AIs will be a larger part of journalism in a closer future than people realize. People think, oh, a machine or an artificial intelligence can't do my job, but really in the long run, machines are better at Things far— more things than we are, and more and more jobs are going to be taken over by machines and by artificial intelligences, and we have to prepare for that as well, including in journalism.

So you started Matchable, or you— I mean, you were one of the co—

I was one of the— I was a— I was one of the— I was a co-editor, an editor-at-large, and one of the first employees.

So tell me about, or all of us, about your experience there. What was that like starting in the midst of this transformative journalistic change when online became, you know, when Mashable became huge?

That was a fun time. I mean, it was like the Wild West of tech and the Wild West of new media. You know, it was just like, we need to get things out. We don't have anybody else. Ben, I remember once I was sitting in a— I was sitting at my desk in Mountain View when I lived down there, and I got a phone call from a friend, and she was like, Ben, what are you doing in 10 minutes? I'm like, I don't know, what am I doing? She's like, Ashton and Demi want to talk to you. And I'm like, that Ashton and Demi? Yes. Okay. So like in like 5 minutes, I was chatting with Ashton and Demi, and they're giving me an exclusive to their Haiti nonprofit. Things like that would just happen to me all the time in the early days. In the early days too, it was just trying to build up audiences and like what feels like silly competitions at the time between like Mashable versus TechCrunch and all sorts of just like, it was a fun time, but I was also I would work from like 11 AM till midnight on a shift, and then I'd be up at 9 AM to go until midnight for another shift because we needed editors 24/7. And then it got bigger and it was different because it was more management. It was more like getting a lot more people. There was more coverage. It was a whole different kind of thing. So it was a fantastic, fantastic experience. And I'm very grateful to Mashable for what it gave me.

So, you know, I forgot that I can change mine.

Well, you didn't press the button. I said human.

You know what, my mouse just gave way.

Oh, so I'm breaking your mouse through the power of lower thirds.

You are. Oh, there it is.

Alrighty.

There we go, it's a delayed human response. So now that we've kind of covered a little bit about about your book. We've gone into your expectations of journalism, a little bit about Mashable and what it was like to work there. We are going to drive into some questions here from everyone on Twitter. There's some great ones I've got scooped up. Just letting y'all know, as you want to pose those questions, please make sure you use #H2HChat so that I can then take those and get them over verbally here to Bryan Kramer, the Chief Human Officer.

Which Bryan Kramer though?

Well, we're going to— that'll be interesting. So Ralph, we just got your question. Thank you so much. All right, so we're going to dive into that, but just final question before I dive into the Q&A. You're now a venture capitalist. So you've gone on from reporter to author to venture capitalist. How are you using— how are you seeing this all come together? Like, what is it that got you into being a venture capitalist? How are you using your skill set, and what are you enjoying about being a VC versus everything else that you've done now?

So I'd like to tell people that I think the skill sets that make for a great journalist are the same or similar to the ones that make for a great venture capitalist. Great journalists can process large amounts of information quickly. They can build audiences. They network extremely effectively. They're great communicators. They have the capability to see trends that others don't and explore those trends. Those are all things that both journalists and venture capitalists have to be able to do. Those skill sets have been very helpful in terms of getting deals and helping my companies and all the important things that come with venture capital. I kind of consider myself a hybrid of all the things. I still do media. I still do journalism. I still also do writing. I also invest. I also start things. I also sit on boards. I think of it less as like I have one specific and individual title. Maybe that's why I keep on changing the lower third, you know? But see, you gotta change the image too, Mr. Ben Parr. They've got the magical image-changing powers. See that? Yeah, I see it. You got it. So I never looked so pretty though, that's the problem. See? I'm not that pretty. So it's almost accurate. It's almost there.

Well, we will— I'll keep trying. One day I'll see if I can—

I've gotten you into this now. I've taken you into this deep, dark hole

of—

and I don't regret it, but I'm so sorry for the rest of your audience that's going to have to deal with this for the next 6 weeks.

They are having so much fun right now, I can't tell you. All right, so let's get into the questions. The first one is from our good friend JS Gilbert. He is asking, why do so many businesses tend to overlook or poorly use email? Is it still good for getting attention?

Is what good for getting attention?

Email.

Email. Well, God, yes. Email is still— like, look, it's not about you replacing one form of medium to the other. It's about being on multiple different mediums. Email is still a core of everything we do. Great newsletters still do really well as businesses, as marketing. So absolutely email is still very important, but I would also stress that, for example, the newer generation is moving away a little bit from email. They use Messenger, they use chat more, which is part of why you're seeing the growth of chatbots. And AI because we're moving away from the longer-form emails to shorter-form messaging.

Okay, so, and right, the longer form in the captivology audience is looking for ROI based upon long form. Would you consider email long form?

It's a longer form than Messenger or iMessage or text, so in that sense, yes. There was no— it's just a comparative point, right? We still have not yet gotten to just emoticons, but people have been launching social networks around that.

Great, good stuff. Okay, moving on to my second follow-up question. Are you going to ask me about my budget? It changed again. Wow.

Yes, I'm the only human to go to Mars.

And you are a crime-fighting criminal. Michelle— sorry, Michelle, I'm going to not say your last name right. I know it. Dizzybon said, are you creating content that violates people's attention of the world?

Not enough. I want to create more content that violates attention. I think again, this is the biggest way to capture short attention is through the disruption trigger. And kind of like the very basic rules of creating content that violates expectations, it has to be simple. So one clear idea. It has to be significant. So it has to match the identity of the brand that you're trying to make. And it has to be Those are the 2 key rules. I'm forgetting, there is one other key rule. It has to be surprising. There we go. It has to be surprising in some way. Those are the 3 key rules, and if it's those 3, you have a chance of captivating people through the disruption trigger.

Great. Okay. Annabella, a good friend of H2H Chat here and ours, said, what's your take on disruption To capture people's attention overall? I just slid the word overall in there because we did talk about that a little bit before, but I think a lot of people came on a little bit after that.

Overall, just capturing attention?

Yeah, using disruption.

Well, those are the— well, disruption are those 3 key rules, right? Simplicity, surprise, significance. Like the Old Spice guy is a perfect example of that because He surprises you every 5 seconds with a different thing. Diamonds come out of his hands. Some other crazy thing happens. But there was another example. Patagonia did a great job with this too, with a campaign they did years ago, the clothing company, with don't buy this jacket, which is not something you're supposed to hear from a brand. Don't buy our stuff. But when you looked into it, they were telling you, we don't want you to unnecessarily buy our stuff. We're about the environment. We'll repair your clothes to protect the environment rather than take profits. And that message resonated. Their sales doubled in 9 months after they launched that campaign. So it's just really about following those 3 rules and making sure you do— when you're using it, you use the disruption trigger in a way that is surprising and is significant to your brand, and then following up on it with another trigger that keeps attention because it's a short attention trigger. So you need something that captures long attention like the mystery trigger or the proper kind of rewards or acknowledgement, which by the way, acknowledgement is the fact that we Pay attention to the people and things that violate or that acknowledge us or provide us with validation, empathy, and understanding.

So I'm going to turn a question here from our friend Nancy Rubin— sorry, a comment. We're going to turn a comment into a question. She said the next tool for journalists are artificial intelligence. Do you agree? Disagree and why.

That the next journalists are artificial intelligences?

Next tool for journalists.

Oh God, yes. Absolutely. It's already started with chatbots. It's absolutely one of the major things. I envision a world where artificial intelligences are companions to us that help extend our brains in ways that we cannot do now. I'm not even sure what that future exactly looks like, but I absolutely think they are going to be core. But to be clear, we're still 5, 10 years away, maybe longer, from true artificial intelligences. But we're already starting with NLP and language processing and the technology underlying that's needed to make AI a mainstream thing. But in the long run, yes, AI is going to be a major, major tool of journalists and journalism.

Great. Good stuff. So Ralph said, has journalism shifted its focus from an informed citizen model to a preferred narrative model?

Yes, but not because— I believe yes, and it's not the fault of the journalists, it's the fault of the tools that disseminate information from journalists. Facebook news feeds and Twitter news feeds are designed in such a way where you're getting the content you want. You're not following— if you're a Republican, you're probably not following a lot of Democrats, and if you're a Democrat, you're probably not following a lot of Republicans. And so it's a self-enforcing echo chamber that in the past you know, everyone watched, you know, the nightly news with the anchors with bro call, and you could get news from a source that both sides trusted or that was— there were fewer sources. And so as a result, there was less of this personalization. So I absolutely think it's going that way, but it's not because of the journalists, but it's a reaction to the tools that we use now to consume information. Hashtag bacon.

I saw that. So what is the differentiation now, or what's the future of using— now live video is available. I don't know if you saw live video was capturing the guy climbing the Trump Tower the other day. It was almost as if everyone became a journalist. Is that possible, and where is the line between professional journalism and everyone else? The

line is clearly blurring in some ways, but that's like— journalists, I think the bigger job is the fact-checking. Is the— is like, yeah, there's a video, but someone's got to verify that video is true. Someone's got to verify that those statements are true. Someone's got to do the investigation that no one else is doing. I think that's what journalism really is about, and that's why there's still a key place for institutional journalism and true journalists. But journalism has, for both good and bad, become more accessible through— like, you know, you can become a great journalist with your own blog as long as you're following You know, you're doing great investigative work, but there's also people we've seen who use— who build audiences to spread misinformation or a different or a very skewed view in the guise of journalism.

And it's uncontrolled.

And it's uncontrolled. It's— that is totally uncontrolled. That's why you saw, for example, Twitter ban Milo, for abuse. You can't— you can only, like, block and hide. You can't stop it, good and bad.

Right, right. All right, so it's gonna be interesting to see where that goes. Getting back over to the question here that JS has for you, another question he has: Ben, does it bother you, and why would you guess, we see writers not giving citations or attributions, even from quality sources?

Well, so you see some of it through hypertext and hyperlinking, and you definitely see it through books, but since the dawn of journalism, the unnamed source has mattered because there is information that you just cannot get without people talking, and they're not going to talk and risk their jobs without Having the veil of anonymity, it does make it dangerous some because people don't believe like you're not naming your source. So what's you know how can we believe you? And so we need more proof of like just like unnamed sources say or like three different sources like you know documentation ledgers emails everything. I don't think. I think there should be more citation of information and facts, but I remember from my time in Mashable and that speed mattered just a little bit more if you wanted to keep up with the competition. And that's part of the unfortunate change that has happened as a result of the new media era of journalism.

Interesting. So yeah, and it is It definitely is a new era. So, okay, I'm going to actually jump because we only— what's that?

Human.

See, you're really good at this because I never think you're going to actually do it and then bam! Okay, so see what you do there? You do a little sidetracking.

Yeah, no, I know, I just derailed the entire conversation by saying human.

Yes, you did, but this time I'm on you.

Okay, all right, we'll

see. Okay, so let's just stay on that track a little bit with live video. How do you see live video? You've obviously been around the block, you know how attention works, you've seen it work, you've seen now live video enter stage right. What is live video now, and what do you think it'll become?

So, you know, I've had a lot of experience with live video, you know, sitting on as an advisor to Ustream and advising other video companies. It's becoming— it's interesting because Facebook, I didn't think was going to dominate the live videoscape with— when they had the war with Periscope and Meerkat, but they were able to win because they were really dedicated. Whether or not that means long-term that's gonna end up being anything, I don't know. It's— I don't know what'll happen with live video specifically. There's gonna— it's very important, there's gonna be a place. You're seeing, for example, live video being very important with the Olympics because who wants to watch a delayed telecast? Yeah. But like, people are being made into stars through it, but I don't know if I think it's gonna be like the big way in which we consume content. It's just yet another medium that you That provides a different experience than, say, a YouTube recorded video or text interface. It's just one of the many components. It does add a sense of realness, a sense of like the ability to actually have a conversation like we're having now. It's only doable through live video. That's why it has a place consistently.

Yeah, it's, it's going to be interesting to see how news channels use news from the public, if you will, because they can get there faster. They can record it faster. So it's going to be very fascinating. Now, I'm going to switch over to beep boop boop and talk to you a little bit about that. Where do you see the trend in beep boop boop, and how do you see it happening?

Did I just give you a topic through beep boop boop? Do you actually want me to answer that one? Because the answer would be artificial intelligence, which I've been talking about, it seems, actually a decent amount in this conversation.

You what?

I was going to say I've been talking about AI a lot in this conversation.

Yeah, and people are bringing up AI quite a bit, so it seems to be a general topic that everybody's interested in.

Well, so the one note I— the other note I will have, there's a great video that everyone should watch. I'll tweet it out after this. If you follow me, you'll see it right after this. It is a video done by CGP Grey on automation and how it's going to change the entire economy and how we're not ready for it. And I've been thinking about ways in which to prepare for it, and I think the government is starting to think about ways, and I'm hoping that we really think about how do you make a world and an economy where I believe personally the vast majority of people do not have to work in order for society to function. And if that's the case, then how do you build an economy where your self-worth is not— should not be entirely based on what you do? Because we need less and less manufacturing jobs worldwide in the long run because robots and machines are always going to do it better than humans and they're always going to be more efficient. So like the idea— this is the things that I think about on a daily basis. How they're going to replace humans. Humans.

Now I'm

good.

I want to jump now into a different topic. We're going to pivot a little bit, because your book is about the reputation trigger. You even cite J.K. Rowling as a source of what some people have called personal branding, if you will. There's how to become an expert. There's lots of ways that you can phrase it.

So the specific on J.K. Rowling, no one bought her book when she was Robert Galbraith, but the moment you put her name on it, same book, different name, suddenly it's a bestseller. Reputation trigger.

Yeah, okay, good, thank you. So she obviously has a strong personal brand, her personal brand sells, now where do you think personal branding exists today? Is it something that— do you see people building their personal brands? Is it the right terminology? Is there something different there that people will start to veer towards, or has nothing changed around being an expert, being a well-known person, if you will?

You have asked a very broad question, fellow human, and let me see. Look, it's more important than ever because jobs are more individualistic. And even like people, founders, companies, we want to build a relationship with the people behind them. And so the personal brand is more important than ever when you want to build like a journalism career, when you want to build any kind of career, because it's the personal brand that gets you the next gig, that gets you the following, that gets you the venture capital deal, and this is where creating content and establishing yourself as an expert in a key area and really actually being an expert in a key area truly matters, and I discuss this in the book, how we pay attention to experts at a very powerful subconscious level. It's called directed deference. We actually turn off the decision-making centers of our brain when we're listening to someone we perceive as an expert. It's a really powerful impact on our attention. And so you have to establish your expertise. And luckily, things like social, blogging, video, all these things help establish ourselves as experts because we have more information and more division. So we need to branch out and be experts in more and more specific areas for the rest of society to function.

Can a person be a brand?

A person is a brand.

Okay.

They always are a brand, whether they like it or not.

And so personal branding and experts coexist?

Yeah, to me they're very similar, the same thing. A personal brand— well, so like an expert is a good personal brand. If your personal brand is people see you as a dumbass, That's not going to be helpful in the long run to your personal brand, but if they see you as an expert, that's what's helpful.

We have a sound for that. Not good in the long run. Okay, so let's end this with a question around your own personal brand. What is your personal brand? What do you want to leave people with if they were to describe you and you had a chance to really craft your personal brand the way that you How do you want to be described?

So I think that changes from time to time, but the answer is like, the answer is that I'm an expert on attention and on understanding how you build attention, whether it's through marketing or whether through advertising or building fan bases or through speaking, whatever it might be. I've spent a lot of time really researching and understanding that, and I'm an expert in technology and really understanding How new technologies impact the way in which we live. How I apply that depends, but I'm an expert in, I think, those 2 key areas, or at least I try to be.

Fantastic, man. I really appreciate it. Everybody knows where to reach you on here, but say it one more time just in case somebody's watching the playback.

Alright, so, well, I'm not Ellie the dog. This is my sister's dog Ellie. I'm gonna change the lower third one last time, and it's gonna have My Twitter, for all of those who want to tweet at me or Facebook me, because all the messages, all the places are the same, @BenPar on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, every social platform. BenPar.com if you want to see the media stuff, you want to get the book, you want to subscribe to the newsletter, you want to book me for speaking, whatever it might be, it's on those 2 things.

Fantastic. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it, Ben.

Absolutely. Thank you, everybody. I'm seeing all your tweets. They're awesome.

Yeah, we just hit a few of the questions. There's a lot more there. And then also, everyone, we're going to be back next week with Mark Fidelman. He is going to be talking about how to use video in your marketing, and he's killing it with video. So we're going to be talking to him. He's also the author of Socialology, I believe. There's a lot of -ologies. Anyway, let's end this week in a great way. Have a fantastic week— sorry, end HTH in a great way. Have a fantastic week. Human. Bruce Wayne, I hope you have a great day saving people. I hope tonight's not a killer and you get some sleep.

Thank you.

Cheers, everybody.