Revenge of the Attention Economy: Why Moments Matter More Than Ever

Stephanie Wierwille: [00:00:00] Welcome everyone to the No Normal show brought to you by BPD. This is where we leave all things status quo, traditional old school, and boring in the dust, and celebrate the new, the powerful, the innovative, the bold, while delivering the future to healthcare’s leading brands. I’m Stephanie, we will EP of Engagement, and I’m joined by the amazing Desiree Duncan, VP of Health, equity, and collusion.

Good morning, Des.

Desiree Duncan: Good morning, happy Monday. happening?

Stephanie Wierwille: It is a Monday. Yes. We, we record these shows for better or for worse, every Monday morning, bright and early. And we were saying Monday hits hard, doesn’t it?

Desiree Duncan: It truly does. It’s like I, it is like I didn’t know what was coming, and then here we are and I’m not, I’m not prepared.

Stephanie Wierwille: Right. It’s like the holidays. We know it’s coming, but we’re never prepared. and we’re also joined by Chris Bevelo, chief Transformation Officer. Hello, Chris.

Chris: Hello. It is like a, what’s the thing where you jump in ice water? A cold plunge. That’s [00:01:00] what it is. This is, this is like a cold plunge for the brain rolling

Desiree Duncan: It’s like,

Chris: a Monday and then hitting this podcast right away.

Desiree Duncan: it’s like, and we’re back.

Chris: And Woo, shake it off. Let’s go.

Stephanie Wierwille: are. Let’s go.

Chris: Let’s go.

Stephanie Wierwille: plunge, I have to say, but I don’t know. This metaphorical one, not so exciting. Um, what is exciting is we have a lot of headlines. There’s, there’s, there’s a lot going on. We’ve all three been reading all the things, watching all the things. Um, we’re really excited about some kind of hot pieces that we’ve been seeing recently, and we’ll just start with that.

We’ll just start with that cold plunge. Chris, we’ll just start with a, a book that the three of us have been reading that has been taking the news headlines by storm. is called Careless People. And Careless People is a tell all book, uh, kind of a whistleblower book, if you will. And it is about our friends at Meta at Facebook, um, specifically Mark Zuckerberg and Cheryl Shan. [00:02:00] Sandberg Careless People is by Sarah Wynn Williams, and the subtitle is A Cautionary Tale of Power, greed, and Lost Idealism. So if that title and subtitle doesn’t tell you what it’s about, um, we, we certainly will. Uh, but we are all in the middle of it. Um, I think Des is the furthest along, so we’ll, we’ll do our best to maybe not spoil too much, but, but I think we can’t help put spoil a little bit, so I’ll just, I’ll just stop there and say, you look like you’re raring to go on this one.

Desiree Duncan: I being hot tea all the way around. I’m here for it. It started, it’s funny, it started off a little slow and then I was like, what is this? It felt a little like low budget, like it was the book form of a lifetime movie. However, it got good.

Chris: That is so dead on.

Desiree Duncan: Right. Okay. I thought it was just me. I was like, why? Why does this read really weirdly? Um, but I mean, the only thing that I could just throughout, um, I’ve been listening to it. Um, and the only thing I think about throughout this constantly is [00:03:00] like, wow, did she not have to sign A NDA because she is sharing all the goods and, but of course there’s been controversy around that. But your take Chris.

Chris: Uh, I’m not as far along as you are. I’m on chapter 11, I think. but I just started getting to the part where the t is all over the table and I’m just gonna say like, I haven’t even got to the, like, egregious things that I’m sure are coming. ’cause we know a lot of them about Facebook from the whistleblower who came out a couple years ago. Uh, so we’re gonna, we’re gonna get a bunch on that. I, I assume. It. It’s really, right now, it’s really not a good portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg. It’s kind of what, it’s what you would expect in the worst case scenario that he’s kind of like a five-year-old running around. Um. He’s clearly a brilliant guy.

Let’s, let’s not, I’m not, you know, but also in his sensitivities and stuff like that, um, and his actions, his behavior, it’s, it’s [00:04:00] reinforcing kind of the worst thoughts there. But I was, what I’m being taken aback by is the Sheryl Sandberg stuff, uh, given her and I think stuff has come out. Look, I didn’t read the book. Lean In. Uh, I am not. I, I, I’m not super familiar with all of her stuff other than the book was really followed by a lot of women, um, because it supposedly, I think, was supposed to teach you how to like, have it all, how to, like the best way to, move up in the corporate world, but still have family life and whatever.

And this book like shatters that within like five pages of talking about it, um, double standards, hypocrisy. Um, just straight up bs so it’s, it’s very unflattering for Sheryl Sandberg and I’m maybe 15 pages into content on her, so I’ll stop there. Stephanie.

Stephanie Wierwille: I’m, I’m not quite as far as you all, but, um, you know, like you said, there has [00:05:00] been whistleblowers before, specifically Francis Haugen, as you mentioned. So in some ways this is not terribly new news, but what is new and different about this take is it is focused on policy and global policy. And so this person, um, their perspective is, it was kind of interesting hearing, you know, she, she really saw this opportunity for Facebook.

Book to, um, take on public policy and, and really think about the global nature of what you know, the company was doing. And she got up a lot of pushback in the early days or even trying to get the job because the leaders at Facebook didn’t even see or understand or realize like why that was gonna be a thing. And so that was interesting, just like the lack of foresight, um, just in the, in the building of the business. and so, uh, you know, this is coming from that slant, which might even be more interesting now given where we are in the world than, uh, than the original whistleblower. Um, details.

Desiree Duncan: My last comment, it was really exciting to just kind of hear like the, [00:06:00] the pop, the opportunity that we had like of shaping moments, movements, what have you, and it just reminded me of like some of the early organizing I did back in the day and just kind of hearing that toll, but then looking at where it went is just so, so sad.

Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah, that made me think a little bit about, you know, where we are right now with the organizations that are being built and of course we’ve got our eye on AI and of course I think have a, have a better handle as a society on how. That’s gonna shape absolutely everything. But at the same time, you think move fast, break things is still the mentality, it’s still the Silicon Valley mentality.

It’s still the mentality of, um, you know, business building in that instance and tech building. Uh, and so I think this is a, to me, this is a bit of a warning tale for our time as well.

Chris: Yes. Oh, huge warning. I mean, I think a lot of people, gen X high, cynical, um. I haven’t been on Facebook since 2018, so I’ve been out of Meta’s [00:07:00] world. No Instagram, no nothing. ’cause I couldn’t stand how they were using my data. So a lot of, a lot of what I assumed about Facebook. Kind of bad intent in many ways I think will be proven out in this book. But also there is also always a feeling like the, this is a big company. They, will do what’s right in the end. They’re smart people. And again, I’m only in chapter 11, uh, but basically it’s giving the, they don’t know what the hell they’re doing. Uh, they’re very successful at the thing they’re doing. But beyond the thing they’re doing, they’re really not considerate, they’re careless, hello, title. Um, they’re not considerate, they’re not thinking. Um, again, I’m not even into the heart of the book, so I think it’s just gonna, it’s gonna show you can’t trust these organizations. That shouldn’t be a shock by now. Um, but if you’re trusting meta to do what’s right by the world, uh, Maybe. Maybe you’re going to be surprised by the [00:08:00] book. We’ll just, we’ll just leave the litigation potential right there.

Stephanie Wierwille: Yes.

Chris: that?

Stephanie Wierwille: Okay, so I’ll wrap it up with that. Um, and, and you know, if you’re listening, go read the book. Tell us what you thought we would love to hear. It would be interesting, um, given that as advertisers, you know, Facebook is a huge part of our, our lives and we make these big decisions based on what Facebook does. Uh, but yes, there is litigation. So Facebook wanted really badly to. Stop the book, stop it coming out, stop the promotion of it. Actually, the day that it came out, um, the, the leaders, uh, at Facebook won a litigation, um, so that, that, uh, it actually says that the book can no longer be promoted specifically by the author.

And then there was a lot of follow-ups done with. Book critics to try to pull it back. So I think that tells you something there. But anyway, we’ll just leave that there and as we finish it, maybe we’ll recap, um, down the road. One more quick, uh, thing. I would love to hear from you both about Dez and Chris.

So we’ve been talking a lot about White Lotus along along the way this year. I [00:09:00] missed last night’s episode, but you all caught it and I heard, I hear was tea there too.

Desiree Duncan: Yeah, things happened, uh, things occurred. Don’t want to spoil it for those that haven’t watched it yet or haven’t caught up. But it’s, um, there was a meme that I saw of the, what’s his name? Michael White. Nope, that’s not his name,

Chris: Mike

Desiree Duncan: the direct Mike White. Okay. And. How he just like, we will write the randomest thing, we will share the Randomist storyline and it just all in the Hals of making us think, making us think about our role in society and how maybe we’re each of them. It was a really interesting takeaway. Chris, what’d you think about the episode?

Chris: That is not a good quote to pull out after last night’s episode. I sure hope we are

Desiree Duncan: And not about the episode, but about the show and the themes of the show in general. Not that one.

Chris: The episode is part of a larger [00:10:00] theme. We cannot talk about it. We shall not talk about it. We will not talk about it. We’ll wait till the end of the season to recap our white lotus thoughts.

How about that? I think there’s, how many more episodes? Two or three maybe.

Desiree Duncan: I think there might just be one, maybe two. I.

Stephanie Wierwille: Uh

Desiree Duncan: April, April 6th is the finale.

Chris: so we got two left.

Desiree Duncan: Two left.

Stephanie Wierwille: to it.

Chris: Yeah.

Stephanie Wierwille: Um, so let’s move on to, we’ve got a couple, actually, several headlines. Um, like I said, lots going on recently. I’m gonna turn this over to you, Chris, I think you have a headline and a shout out. Um, and, and then we’ll, we’ll get into our bigger topics. X.

Chris: Yeah, so last week we did an episode on generations, specifically Generation X and I shouted out my friend, uh, Alan s Shoebridge, who, uh, is a senior executive at Providence. ’cause I know that Alan. Loves Gen X and I, I think I might’ve known he wrote a book, but I didn’t know the title, which we found out when we posted the, [00:11:00] um, the pod on LinkedIn because his co-author jumped in and said, Hey, actually, ’cause we kind of talked about how there’s not a lot that digs into Gen X, particularly Gen X’s role in healthcare, uh, and the co. Turns out, Alan actually is a co-author of this book, but his co-author, Dean Brawl jumped and said, actually, there’s a great book on this. And it’s called, don’t You Forget About Gen X One Generation’s Crucial Role in Healthcare, which was almost exactly some of the stuff we were saying. So, uh, Dan Meyers, by the way, is the third author.

So to give credit to Alan, Dan, and Dean, uh, I have not read the book. I don’t remember, um, seeing that title, but obviously that’s really close to what we were talking about. We even made. Fun of the Simple Mind song. So maybe people should go read that and they will get the in-depth, uh, take that we were unable to find when we look for it.

So it’s great that there’s a resource out there. So there

Desiree Duncan: I am excited to read it.

Stephanie Wierwille: Um, awesome. Okay, one more headline, I [00:12:00] think back to you again, Chris. So, um, we’ve been covering policy quite a bit on this show maybe every week in January and February because it’s, there’s, there’s so much moving and so much changing. Uh, and so because of that, we have, uh, taken on a new way to cover that, that goes even beyond this show.

So what did, what does that, Chris, what does that look like?

Chris: is called Policy, ICU. So what we’ve done is, and we might have mentioned this before, uh, I can’t remember, but it, the, the whirlwind that has been the last, well, I guess now a couple months, uh, coming out of DC and always feels so similar to some of us, uh, as, as this time actually almost exactly, uh, four years ago, in 2020 when Covid hit. And just the, the tsunami of news, the speed at which things were changing and happening, the import of the things that were changing and happening. [00:13:00] Uh, and there’s been a lot of that coming out of dc. This is related to the new administration related to healthcare. Yeah. And so we’ve gotten a lot of clients who have asked, you know, like, Hey, uh, what are your sources for this?

Can you help us with this? So we pulled together, uh, a website that essentially is not just a curation of what’s happening because stuff happens literally every day. Uh, there are headlines every day. So you imagine an executive order. uh, released related to healthcare. That’s big news. Uh, how people respond to it is news lawsuits, dis court decisions, what health systems are doing, what the CMS is doing.

Like it just goes on and on and on. We imagine this will go on for the rest of this year. Uh, hopefully not. I. Longer, but it could go longer. And so we’ve pulled together a site that curates all of this with our take on it related to, uh, our clientele, which are primarily health systems. So, uh, when [00:14:00] cuts are, uh, announced at the VHA for example, we have a blog post about, Hey, that’s obviously not a good thing if you’re in the VHA, uh, if you work there, if you are a patient there.

But for our, for. Other health systems, they need to think about this too, because that means vets aren’t going to have the resources they had before and they may be using private healthcare, public healthcare, whatever you wanna call it, uh, outside the VHA. And what does that mean for you and how do you need to accommodate that? So we have blog posts in there. Uh, we have three or four things that post every day. Uh, we have an a MA section, so you can ask us anonymous questions and we’ll post those and answer those. Uh, we’re gonna try to have biweekly phone conversations with whoever wants to get on the phone and talk through what’s happening. So all of this is available, it is password protected. It’s a secure site so you can go in there and, and see things. If you would like access to it, there’s no cost. [00:15:00] Uh, what you need to do is just email us at no normal@bpdhealthcare.com and we will send you the link for you to register. You just have to give your name and, Company and your email address, and then we approve you, uh, because we really only want folks in healthcare in this forum. and then we’ll get you right in there and you can have access every day to what’s happening, but not just what’s happening, kind of our point of view on it and potential implications. Policy ICU, there you go.

Stephanie Wierwille: Yay. I think this is just gonna be so valuable, Chris, and I’m so excited about it. I’m excited to, to keep up with, um, policy ICU as well, and I know we’ll be, I’m sure we’ll be talking about several of those things along the way, but, um, perhaps one of our themes from our, our next headline and our.

Our spotlight topic today is just the rapid pace of change. So as you pointed out, you know, policy is changing so quickly now, and so policy ICU lets us catch up on it and [00:16:00] help everybody else keep up on it. Um, so we don’t have to wait every week or month or um, or whatever. so super exciting. One last headline here.

So, um, it’s always an exciting moment for me. It’s like Christmas morning when South by Southwest happens, and Amy Webb from The Future Today Institute, which is now the Future Today Strategy Group. Um, she does her. Big keynote speech. And this year at South by, which I think was a week and a half ago-ish, she launched her 2025 Emerging Tech Trend report.

And this thing is a monster. This thing is like a hundred pages. Usually it’s, it’s more than a bedtime read. It is, um, more than a novel. It’s just so dense and so interesting. And there’s. There’s so many trends in there and I always keep it, um, back pocket throughout the entire year and kind of refer to it.

So we all three took a peek at this and specifically, uh, her YouTube video, which you can see it is, uh, live. She [00:17:00] live streams her talk every year for free. And highlights all of the changes happening. So we, we all did a bit of a dive into this and no surprises. It’s a lot about AI and the future of ai, but it’s also about the future of AI meets biology, gen, generative biology, synthetic biology, and quite a lot that’s applicable both to marketing and healthcare. Um, and I think one of the interesting things that she called out, again, back to that point about change, she says. is happening in minutes now. Um, every single time you turn around, there’s a policy update. There is a tech update. Um, and that’s, that’s kind of a new thing that she’s seeing. I wanna hear, um, either Des or Chris, as you all took a look at this, did you have any burning thoughts on it?

Desiree Duncan: Yeah, I mean, just the living intelligence. I, I’m very excited about it. I’ve been a little, uh, I don’t know, kind of not afraid, but staying back, like for example, [00:18:00] uh, RayBan’s meta glasses, I’ve been wanting them for a while, but also given our conversation earlier, I don’t know how much of my data, like actual physical data that I want meta to have, that idea of everything kind of connecting. Um, and then the other piece was around the predicting behavior. And just how we can really create engagement and ideas, uh, based off of kind of predictive nodes around, you know, what folks, uh, historically have done, might do what have you, and just kind of coming up with ideas around that. but yeah, so it was very dense.

It was like a thousand slides. A lot of good information, a lot of it over my head. but excited for the future, but also deeply terrified as to what this can mean in not even just five years from now, but almost just five minutes. Chris, what were your thoughts?

Chris: I have not dug into the thousand I. Page

Stephanie Wierwille: What, you didn’t read

Chris: no, I,

Stephanie Wierwille: the weekend, Chris?

Chris: did not, I did not [00:19:00] do that. Um, it’s on my to-do list, which means who knows? I may have to just like look at the summary. I’m a, I’ll feed it into AI and get a summary. How about that? How about that for a, a meta, another use of the word meta. That’s all I got.

I got nothing. I got nothing on that other than it sounds super interesting and she’s incredibly bright and smart. So what she says I pay attention to. So maybe she needs to say it in less than a thousand slides, but other than that, I will give it a shot.

Stephanie Wierwille: It’s a perfect segue for our bigger topic.

Chris: Yeah, it is.

Stephanie Wierwille: yeah, let’s just jump right and I might refer back to Amy Webb a few times in this larger, in this, in this topic too. ’cause I think that some of the things that she shared in her talk are very applicable to our main topic. So our main topic is, we’re calling it life and Moment. but there was this really interesting article, Chris, that you, I think you actually texted it to me, um, a week ago or so and you were like, this is so interesting. Um, and, and so we wanted to talk about it [00:20:00] ’cause there’s some really bigger applications for media, for, uh, marketing, for just, I don’t know, societal and cultural change.

So the article is called the Age of Consuming Sports in Bite-Sized Moments. Um, and, and really the, the, the key. Piece here is that nobody’s, we’re not, we’re not tuned in for the games. We’re not tuned in for the long form content, right? We don’t have the time. To Chris’s point, we’re not reading thousand page tech trend reports.

We want to get them summarized and get the take. Um, and so it kind of talks about what it looks like to be in an age of moments, in an age of highlight reels instead of. Um, the bigger event. So, Chris, if you wanna set this up and maybe tell us how you found it, what it meant to you, how you’ve been seeing this trend in your own life, and then own life.

And then we can, we can tear it apart.

Chris: And I will say that, um, knowing that if I had a nickname, it would be the old man and the long content, long form content. ’cause I am feel like I’m the king of [00:21:00] long form content. I can’t write anything short. I do like thousand page things. I have a take on why books are surviving and, but may die off on that a little bit. Uh, but yeah, so that’s just my caveat yet this article, which, which by the way is by, uh, Brian Phillips and Is On The Ringer, which I’m not familiar with. The Ringer is basically a sports pop culture website, lots of podcasts, that kind of thing. Uh, and Stephanie set it up well, but I think what’s, what’s interesting about it is kind of the turn it takes. So it, essentially talking about. Something that’s been discussed for a while now and something I realized a few years ago, if you asked me what my favorite sport is, I would say the NBAI follow it regularly. I know all of the takes. I know all of the storylines. I, I read the box scores. I’m, I’m into all the drama I.

And I never watch a game. I mean, never. My, my team is the Timberwolves. If I’m at a Buffalo Wild Wing with friends and it’s on, I’ll watch. [00:22:00] And in the playoffs, if they go far, I’ll watch. I know there are a lot of people that still watch sports. However, the point here is, uh, I don’t need to watch the game. actually enjoy the sport. And that is one reason people are saying why the NBA ratings are dropping like a stone, right? Uh, they’re really going down. It’s because people aren’t watching. So the author tries to take a positive spin. So he’s saying, look, this is more than just, he calls it quote, irrefutable evidence that the internet drove a monster truck through the plate.

Glass of our brains, meaning our attention spans are just like. Gone. We have no attention span. We’re addicted to our devices. We want to consume everything. That’s the Stephanie. You’ll talk about fear of missing, uh, missing everything, right? Or anything instead of fear of missing out. All those are true, but what he’s saying is there’s something more going on here.

Right? Uh, because he talks about, it’s not just that people are only. Consuming and teeny tiny bits [00:23:00] anymore. Like all I need to see is the, the highlight of the dunk. And before he said like, that was just like a scene out of the movie and you didn’t know the whole movie, so who cares about that scene? He’s like, now the dunk is the movie. Right. Um, and he’s talking about it in terms of, if that’s true, then why are people playing fantasy league? Um, where they are general managers. Where you basically have to have like an MBA to really do well, so you have to go in depth to do this stuff. So what’s that about? Like that’s the opposite of just like, I just wanna see the dunk.

Right. So his point, his his turn is that, um, this is really about moments any kind of interaction that is shareable. Yeah. So he’s talking about is the power of, um, it’s really hard to do anything with a two hour basketball game with people unless you’re physically with [00:24:00] them, which is less and less the case, right? So he says the advantage of the moment may be less, that it’s short. And more that you can do something with it, share it, mummify it, add a caption to it. As fans, we’re always looking for excitement. More beauty and less boredom, and a great moment certainly gives that to us, but maybe a great moment can also give us a little of what athletes get every time they play in a game.

It gives us something to do. So that to me was. the build onto the kind of thing that people have been talking about for a while now, which is like, nobody’s watching nobody. Nobody’s really watching sports. And if they are, like, I’ve been watching the basketball games for the last weekend for the, for the NCA tournament and I’m always doing something else. I’m always doing something else. Um, but a lot of what I’m doing is talking to my friends about a play or I’m sharing a clip of a play. Uh, and so is that, is that necessarily a bad thing? He’s like, I’m an optimist. I’m gonna assume this is a deeper [00:25:00] engagement with sports. Not a bad thing. But then he, he does say like, now I dunno what that means for outside of sports. And he just says, I’m even gonna go there. Right. It’s not necessarily a good thing for everything. So that’s the setup.

Desiree Duncan: Yeah. It brings up a really interesting point and it honestly, it reminds me of like the early days of Twitter and live tweeting and how you, would be on Twitter and I would start to see a bunch of engagement about like, maybe it was an award show. This was mostly like in black Twitter, so it was either like.

Scandal Empire or the BET Music Awards and just going completely in on that. Um, but in a way it made me feel like, oh, like I wanna be a part of the conversation. I wanna be in relationship. And then you look at it today and like, yes, we are second screening it, sometimes even third screening it, but you’re building a relationship with it. And so outside of sports, it almost, it reminds me of like fan fiction. Where you get so into it that you kind of build [00:26:00] worlds and like continue the conversation beyond the books, beyond the, the movies or what have you. But I know, Stephanie, you have some thoughts as well.

Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah, I mean, I agree with you and I think building on that, it’s interesting because you know, now we’ve seen this trajectory of, to your point, the beginning days of live tweeting, and then the second screen, the third screening. And I would say like now it’s almost like the first screen is gone we’re just on the fourth screen, if you will. And sometimes that looks like just, you know, catching the highlights. Like Chris mentioned in sports, sometimes I think it looks like just catching a headline and repeating that headline. you know, sometimes it looks like just catching the, the TikTok video of the thing, right? Like what’s that viral moment happening?

You didn’t see the, maybe the episode or whatever it was, but you saw the tiktoks, um. The tiktoks, it makes me sound really old. You saw the tiktoks, you saw what was happening on the talk. Um, and, and you shared that. Right? And so to me, like I think about what’s the [00:27:00] underlying reason for this, and I think it is, I’m calling it the revenge of the attention economy, but. know, I used to quote those stats about every 60 seconds. There’s, I dunno what it was, 500,000 new videos created on YouTube or something. I mean, that was like seven years ago. Now we just have this massive amount of constant flow of data, constant stream of content in front of us. And I don’t know about you all, but I feel like almost anxiety around. Trying to catch all the things, trying to keep up with stuff. To the point. Amy, Amy Webb made this point. She was the one that coined that phrase. She said, um, this no longer fomo. It’s fomo. We have shifted from the fear of missing out to the fear of missing anything. and so it’s just like, there’s just so much happening.

You don’t have time to watch the game. don’t have time to read the thousand page report. Um, you just want that bite-sized summary, and then you’re gonna move that forward in whatever way you can. And maybe deep dive on that, like Chris mentioned. So I think that’s a huge societal change that happened, and I love that.

I don’t know what, [00:28:00] what was that you said, Chris, about the dumpster truck to our brain. What was that phrase?

Chris: dumpster truck to our brain. Did I say that?

Stephanie Wierwille: yes. You said something about how there’s been like a, a dumpster truck through the plate. Gra glass of our attention

Chris: Oh, a monster truck

Stephanie Wierwille: The

Chris: smashing through the, and that was not me, that was the author of the article who said that? Yes. Um, yes. That’s what it is. Like that’s exactly it. Yes. Yeah,

Stephanie Wierwille: I mean, I was having a conversation with my hairstylist the other week and she was saying like, she’s like, I don’t even have the attention span anymore to watch an episode, a TV episode. Like it’s just this constant

Chris: crazy.

Stephanie Wierwille: content. We are our, our attention span has gone from the six seconds of the goldfish, I feel like, down to two seconds. And because of that we are just looking for the bite-size piece. So that’s my. Cultural take. Maybe I’ll, I’ll come back and share what I think it means for marketing, but how does that sit with you all?

Desiree Duncan: [00:29:00] Yeah, I mean it, it’s why A SNL is still relevant these 50 years later, especially when people aren’t watching the full like 90 minutes of it. Like, who’s got time? I’m out here in the streets. But you see that luckily they have chopped up all of the different skits and clips and uploaded them to their YouTube channel, you know, starting, I don’t know, over a decade ago, and then you can.

See all the pieces without having to drag through some of the, uh, worse skits, the less funny skits. and then on top of that, to your point about like, I can’t, like at home, I can’t just sit and watch like I’m on my phone and I’m like, Ugh, I’m disgusted with myself. But it’s one of the main reasons why I am all about going to the movie theater. And that experience so that I can actually focus because if I have my phone out, know, Nancy negative over here is going to call the ushers on me and get me booted out. And so I do have to make sure that my phone is off and like be in the moment. ’cause I, it’s, I find [00:30:00] myself always trying to find those opportunities to be in the moment because so much just takes me out of it and I’m just like completely distracted.

Chris: Yeah, the, it’s, it’s why I don’t go to movies anymore though. Because does, most people don’t follow that and they do, do act. It’s like it’s their living room and I’m like, no. Like you’re breaking. You’re breaking. What makes this great? It is the hot take, I was gonna say on books, reading a physical book, maybe the last medium, I suppose.

You could throw magazines in newspapers so they even survive. You cannot read a book and have a second. Screen, you can maybe listen to some music. but it’s different than even listening to a book. I’ve caught myself listening to a book on tape. And then just, it’s by the way, we have a lot of, uh, the tech companies that we mentioned earlier to thank for this addiction that is not coincidental, that is not societal. That is an intentional tapping into the part of your brain that is tied to addiction. You are literally just hoping for the next [00:31:00] thing, right? And so try to like listen to a book. And then also go on your phone. actually caught myself like listening to a book and then listening to a video accidentally and going, what in the world am I doing? You can’t do it with a i I defy anybody to read a book and also have another screen and look at them both and get anything out of it. So, to me, does, I don’t even have movies anymore. It’s just the, that’s the only thing left to have for that moment.

Desiree Duncan: Oh, it also depends on what movie that you’re going to. It sounds like you’re going to like a regal and it’s full of like and children. I go to just indies so that.

Chris: It fi, it’s usually filled with people. It’s a good point. Yeah.

Stephanie Wierwille: No, no. Nick, Chris, you are the Nancy Negative in scenario, it sounds like.

Chris: What do you mean? Yes. I mean, that’s why they don’t even go anymore because it’s not one or two people, it’s the whole audience. So it’s just, it destroys what Des is talking about. And I don’t know, people just don’t know how to [00:32:00] not do it, and I almost don’t blame them. ’cause again, like there’s some pretty big companies who, by the way, as we learn in the book, and we already knew this, um, if you watch some documentaries on it, do not let their kids have. Smartphones or go on social media. ’cause they know the addictive nature of it, the very people that are putting these products out. So

Desiree Duncan: That everything that they do from a policy standpoint, from what allegedly they were trying to do, altruistically, quote unquote, was all in the name of getting more people. How can we get more people addicted to, to this? I don’t know, I’m, uh, excited to see what more comes of that and just how like, uh, shut it all down.

Chris: Well, we know that, uh, controversy, um, you know, scandal, negativity, anger, like all that stuff drives people to pay attention, right? It’s like the rubbernecking driving by a car accident. Um, they [00:33:00] know that. And so they feed more of it. They feed you more stuff to get you riled up, to keep you engaged.

Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah, so to that, I’ve been thinking a lot about how in this environment. a brand, do you play the game because you have to play the game, or do you. Or do you say, how do we operate in this environment where that’s the expectation, but are we just gonna feed more into this? Are we just gonna contribute to it?

So, let me, I’m gonna lay out some, some, I don’t know, I think interesting media scenarios or media changes, and then I wanna come back to that point of like as a brand. Do you, how do you play into this in the right way, but then also where do you maybe take a back seat, um, in some areas? So there was a really interesting, uh, report that came out in January, uh, by a research research firm out of the UK called Magic Numbers.

And they did a study in partnership with work and they shared some really interesting media cha changes that. Play exactly into this trend. [00:34:00] So I love one of the headlines they called out, which is big ads on big channels are replaced by a lot of littles. We all know linear TV impressions are down.

That’s not new news, right? Um, especially for younger audience. In fact, it’s down by 73% in the last 10 years. But what I thought was really interesting was they broke up all these little teeny tiny time block places and actually kind of categorize it in new ways that I hadn’t seen before. So we’re spending our time in channels.

Such as traditional social, alt social. So think like Discord or maybe even Reddit podcast niche email. I hadn’t thought about. Niche email as a channel. Communities, news sites, niche sites, AI apps, search engine, and then owned sites, which was a pretty general category, which included things like brand sites and, and more. And there were, there was more than that, but just they broke down like. media time, of course, has been increasing, but it’s gotten more and more fragmented, and the way it’s gotten more fragmented is with these bite-sized pieces. So they studied holiday campaigns from [00:35:00] last year, from December, 2024. I. they found was that headline, big ads on big channels are replaced by a lot of littles. So instead of budgets going towards, here’s my 62nd or 92nd Anthem spot, you know, it is, here’s my a hundred pieces of super bite-sized content. Um, I’ve heard that this referred to before as non-linear narratives, but like all the little teeny tiny pieces that you’re putting out. how you’re stitching them together because you’re not gonna expect somebody to necessarily lean into your long form content. Although I don’t want this to sound like long form is dead. I think you still need that game that you know, that, that your biggest fans watched in order to get those highlight reels. Um, but I thought that was kind of interesting and I don’t know if you all are seeing that, um, in your brand work, but I thought it was a really big shift of media given this cultural change.

Desiree Duncan: Yeah, I mean, starting after the election, the conversations around kind of going to these personalized areas [00:36:00] where people are gathering. So yes. Uh, a, a meta, uh, is a place where people, like we’ve talked about how we need to go, where people are, and yes, all of them are on these channels. However, super duper saturated.

Right, but then if you really wanna have resonance, it’s like show up where a person is geeking out, where a person is really actually paying attention and not just scrolling, they’re actually paying attention to the conversation as you would see in the subreddits and the discords and what have you.

You’re there for that thing, but then also making sure that you tie it in to that thing. You don’t wanna just have some random, like ad or just completely off topic things show up. You need to. Embedded into the conversation. But you know, that takes so much more, um, work. Granted though we have some ai, some of what we saw in that, uh, deep dive, the trends report that we can use to help predict some of that stuff.

But the more that we can actually make something relevant to where a person is and and where they’re engaging the better. I dunno if [00:37:00] Chris, if you’ve seen some things.

Chris: Yeah, I just, it makes me think of a, a couple things. We’ve been talking about engagement forever. I, I don’t know, a decade at least, the importance of engagement and this, this just tells me that engagement’s even more important, right? Because engagement was always one of the best ways to build and strengthen a relationship to a brand.

If you can engage somebody that ties much stronger than just an impression, well now you’ve got audiences that want to engage. So it’s even more important that you are engaging with them in the way that they want, where they want, um. And that may be in the moments like we’re talking about, but I think there’s also kind of like, it’s like a double edged sword because I don’t think engagement is always positive. Uh, and it will not always be in your control. So of course you want to generate, to DE’s point, as Stephanie said earlier, um, the right engagement moments. But it, it, there’s going to be engagement that happens whether you like it or not. And I think a great example of this is the phenomenon when somebody changes their logo, [00:38:00] um, this gets into a different trend, which I’ve dubbed the 2 cent nation.

We’ve become the 2 cent nation. Everybody wants to give their 2 cents because they can. So they will. And I think even worse than that is people think that their opinions. Are the same and equal to everybody else’s opinion. ‘ cause they have one, whether it’s based in accuracy or it’s informed or it’s coherent. Um, but if you change your logo, all of a sudden everybody’s like a experienced designer and they got something to say about the color of orange that you use. And I just, I still can’t get over everybody’s anger at the Tropicana logo. Like, seriously. Like, we have too much time in our hands. But that’s going to happen in all kinds of ways to you.

So how do you navigate that? Right? Like my advice would be just like, let it happen. Like people are gonna say, no matter what you do, people are gonna say something. So you have to be okay with that, or you’re not gonna do anything. Um, but also nurture the positive. How do you have fun of it? Some brands have fun with that kind of stuff. Uh, and then obviously [00:39:00] nurturing the positive. And then I’ll just reinforce one more time what Stephanie, what you said. Um. I think depending on the brand and the situation, it’s probably moving more to quantity, over depth over, um, you know, long books, however. Don’t just go with headlines and tweets, right?

You can’t be all surface level. There are brands, particularly our clientele that are built in large part on expertise. and you can’t be an expert with tweets and headlines only. You have to have long form. You have to have deeper dives. Uh, no matter how we’re thinking about this, your true fans. We’ll want more. So the fan fiction doesn’t happen without the fiction in the first place. Like you said earlier, the, the highlight of the dunk doesn’t happen without the game in which nobody’s going to share dunks of somebody alone in a gym dunking, nobody cares. Right? So even there, it’s the same moment. You gotta have the content in the first place, [00:40:00] so you can’t abandon that.

And that’s not just me, old guy. this feels like a, like a myth. Like the old man in the sea, the old man and the long form content. Um, that’s not just ’cause I want it. I think that’s true. Um, generationally. So

Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah.

Chris: what I have to add to that.

Stephanie Wierwille: I agree. I agree. I mean, you need your

Chris: I.

Stephanie Wierwille: ecosystem, but you can’t forget about the moments. And I think it’s just so easy to be like, okay, we made our campaign and now we’re done. Great. End of day walk away. And it’s like, no. What are all your many, many millions. Probably even millions of moments around that. Um, and the last thing I’ll say is just here’s my little, my little cautionary tale. I think it’s just to your point about the 2 cent nation, Chris, like, I don’t know. That is just, it’s just driving me up the wall these days. Just the amount of hot opinions online and you know, we always run to the comments, right?

You like break, break your hip, running to the comment section, um, to see what people are saying. Um, and I think as a. As brands, that just makes our jobs [00:41:00] way, way, way harder because you have to have the hottest, boldest, most crazy take to even break through and in healthcare. Like that’s really not the job. We don’t, we oftentimes don’t want to have that, that, because we’re to your point, experts. Um, so I think about like a good example. We, we talked about Duolingo, the owl and his death. I mean, it’s kind of ridiculous. D ridiculous. But it’s an example of like that brand that was something that they needed to do to break through this clutter.

And my caution is how much do we really wanna play the game? Um, because we could turn into the, you know, what’s happening in the media, which is just like the headlines get more and more ridiculous in order to get those clicks. Um, and you know, it’s just. The revenge of the attention economy is what I keep going back to the revenge of the 2 cent nation. So I think that’s, that’s the marketer’s job is you wanna have the boldest most cut through most breakthrough, um, most interesting much is tension grabbing message that still remains true to who you are at your heart. And there therein lies the magic of the job. I think. [00:42:00] So my, my last point here, but last quick takes before we wrap up?

Chris: Watch White Lotus watch it.

Stephanie Wierwille: that. my homework. all right, so for everybody listening, thank you so much for joining and be sure to subscribe. We cover all of this and more in our newsletter, the No normal Rewr Rewind, which recaps the discussions that you’ve heard, um, and also shares other things that we’re seeing. If you have anything to share as well, shoot us an email at no normal@bbdhealthcare.com. Join us on policy ICU to find out what’s going on in the policy world and make sure you share the show with friends and colleagues. And until that, until next time, don’t be satisfied with the normal push your, uh, moments, your many, many, millions of, of content pieces, and we’ll talk to you next week.

Chris: Bye.

Stephanie Wierwille: So we have a lot to cover this week. There’s a lot going on. Uh, first we’re gonna hit a couple headlines. We’re gonna talk about a book that we’re all reading, which is actually really interesting. [00:43:00] Um, it has some hot takes around meta we’re gonna cover, um, ab Web’s 2025 Emerging Tech Trend Report, which always.

Pops at South by Southwest. It’s such an exciting moment. And we’ve got a couple takeaways from that. And then we’re gonna get into our main topic of the week, which is, we’re calling it Life and Moments. Um, but it’s this idea that, uh, moments are actually becoming more and more important. And the highlight reels, the short snippets of content, think the headlines, the TikTok, um, moments, and those are capturing attention far more than.

The bigger, longer form content out there. So we’re gonna talk about what that means for brands and what that means for culture overall. And I’ll do the outro.

So for all of you listening, thank you so much for joining. We would love it if you subscribe to the newsletter, the No Normal Rewind, which is where we share all of this discussion and more so you can catch up on what happened this week [00:44:00] and we would love to hear from you. So if you have anything you’d like us to cover on.

Future episodes, shoot us an email at no normal@bbd.com and we’ll feature your question in a future episode. Also, if you wanna join us in policy ICU, like we talked about earlier, and keep up what’s happening in the policy world, um, you can shoot us an email or join in@bbdhealthcare.com. And as always, make sure you share the show with friends and colleagues.

We love that. And until next time, don’t be satisfied with the normal push, the no normal, and we’ll talk to you next week. Thank you all. Bye.