Welcome to the war for attention.

Every once in a while, an article or a video I come across stands out. Alex Smith’s “We’re in an attention war, get used to it” resonated with me. I’ve followed Alex for a while and hold his thinking in high regard.

The consumers we’re trying to reach have more competing for their attention than they can possibly take in. And a lot of it is actually interesting. Our latest product, campaign or perspective has to earn a place in that mix.

We can spend months developing something, get the organization behind it, put real money into launching it, and still barely register. Consumers may never give us enough attention to understand why it matters.

Alex distinguishes between an interesting topic and an interesting voice. Sports cars give Ferrari a subject car enthusiasts already want to hear about. Then there’s Ogilvy UK vice chairman and author Rory Sutherland, whose personality, experience and perspective can make an otherwise ordinary subject fascinating. The subject gives Ferrari a head start. With Sutherland, we want to hear how he sees it.

Are we working hard enough to be interesting?

Before we write the headline, we have to find something consumers haven’t considered, develop a perspective that changes how they see a problem, or make a product meaningfully better and find a creative way for them to experience it. That takes investigation, experimentation and a willingness to keep pushing an idea after we have something that’s perfectly acceptable.

Make the product part of the interest

On’s LightSpray experience in London, held during marathon week this April, paired live demonstrations of its robot-sprayed shoe technology with opportunities to test the shoes.

Runners could watch the shoe being made and then feel how it performs. The engineering creates interest; trying the shoe lets runners explore what it means for them. On has a story rooted in the product, with a way for runners to get involved.

That kind of story gets built by product and marketing together. I’d have the two teams start with two questions. Where could a meaningful improvement become something consumers want to see or experience? And where does an interesting promise require us to raise the performance of the product itself?

Give consumers something to participate in

LEGO’s Formula 1 program for 2025 included fan zones at 13 races, builds fans could take home, racing ramps in stores and activities families could do together. The products covered all ten teams. Then at the Miami Grand Prix in May, LEGO put ten drivable F1 cars built from nearly 400,000 bricks each on the track, with all 20 drivers at the wheel for the Drivers’ Parade. Formula 1’s chief commercial officer called it one of the most talked-about moments of the season. Fans asked for more, and this July at Silverstone every driver got their own 28,000-brick minicar.

F1 brings the passion for racing. LEGO gives fans a way to build and play with it. That connection opens up an entire program across products, events, stores, the home and the track itself. A family can do something with the idea, and come back to it in different ways.

LEGO’s purpose around building and play gives the partnership direction. You can see why these experiences belong together and why LEGO is the company to create them.

What do our consumers already care about that our brand could help them explore or enjoy more? Getting to a good answer takes a real understanding of their interests, along with a clear view of what we can contribute.

Let customers help judge the work

WalkMe’s September 18, 2026 Singapore event agenda included “Demoing with the Stars”: four live demonstrations, each tackling a different business challenge, scored by a panel of customers and experts.

Give customers a problem they recognize, show them a way to solve it, and let customers help judge the work. The format gives the audience something to compare and discuss, while keeping the product’s usefulness central.

Where could you bring customers into a demonstration, workshop or event in a way that makes their judgment part of the experience?

Put more into developing the idea

Each of these took real development. On worked on LightSpray for four years before its first factory opened, and the London experience came after that. LEGO’s model team called the Miami cars its biggest challenge to date, with 26 people and more than 22,000 hours behind ten cars. From the inside, the idea that holds attention usually looks like a lot of work after the point where everyone would have signed off on something simpler.

The raw material for that kind of idea usually sits outside the category. A behavior that’s just starting to show up, a frustration customers stopped complaining about years ago, a result in our own research that didn’t fit, something another industry already figured out. Hand a team the same familiar examples and the same category assumptions, and it’s hard to blame them for landing somewhere familiar.

Once a team has a few directions it believes in, the question is whether anyone outside the building agrees. I’d put a rough version in front of the customers we want to reach before anyone falls in love with the execution, and listen for what they ask about and what they repeat back. That’s how you find out an idea is less interesting than it felt in the room, while there’s still time to change it.

The harder part comes when the idea comes back unfamiliar. Do we give the team room to develop it, or steer them toward something everyone can approve this week? The point of view that made it worth pursuing is usually the first thing to go in that meeting.

AI changes the economics here. A team can explore far more directions than it could a year ago and get to a rough version in days. The judgment about which direction is interesting enough to keep developing, and where it still needs work, is still ours.

For 2027, I’d make sure our plans give this work real time and resources. We’re asking customers to interrupt something else they care about and spend time with us. I want us to have a much better answer for why they should.