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\n\t\tOpinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.\t<\/p>\n
For most of my career in marketing, brands have been obsessed with one thing: getting more of people\u2019s attention. More time on your website. More email opens. More engagement. More content. More notifications. More reasons for someone to pick up their phone and interact with your brand.<\/p>\n
But lately, I think we\u2019re starting to see people crave the exact opposite. They want a reason to put their phones down.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re seeing people get excited about analog hobbies again. Dinner parties. Run clubs. Book clubs. Mahjong nights. Crafting. In-person events. Even phone-free experiences where the whole point is that you aren\u2019t documenting every second of what you\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n
And I think there is a much bigger lesson here for entrepreneurs and marketers. For years, we have been asking, \u201cHow do I get people to spend more time with my brand?\u201d <\/p>\n
Maybe the better question now is: \u201cHow can my brand help people spend their time better?\u201d<\/p>\n
I say this as someone who owns a PR and marketing agency and is constantly telling brands they need content. They do. But we also need to acknowledge the obvious: People are drowning in it.<\/p>\n
There is always another Reel to watch. Another email to open. Another podcast to listen to. Another brand telling you to follow, subscribe, click or buy. And now AI has made it possible to create even more content, even faster.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think the answer is simply to make more. I think brands have an opportunity to create experiences that people actually want to be present for.<\/p>\n
That might sound counterintuitive. Why would a brand want someone to put their phone away when that person could be posting about the experience?<\/p>\n
Because sometimes an experience becomes more valuable when it isn\u2019t designed around being shared. If you create something genuinely interesting, people will probably talk about it later anyway.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve worked on brand events for years, and somewhere along the way, we started designing a lot of experiences backward.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the photo moment?<\/p>\n
Where\u2019s the logo?<\/p>\n
What will influencers post?<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the hashtag?<\/p>\n
Those things can absolutely matter. But sometimes we\u2019re so focused on creating the content that will come out of an experience that we forget about the actual experience.<\/p>\n
Was it fun?<\/p>\n
Did people meet someone new?<\/p>\n
Did they learn something?<\/p>\n
Did they stay longer than they expected?<\/p>\n
Would they have wanted to be there if they weren\u2019t allowed to post a single photo?<\/p>\n
That last question is one I think more brands should ask. Imagine hosting a dinner where phones aren\u2019t on the table. A class that requires people to actually participate. A club that meets every month. A small event where the goal isn\u2019t to get 200 pieces of social content, but to get 30 people to genuinely love being there.<\/p>\n
The reach might look smaller on paper. The impact might be much bigger.<\/p>\n
Marketers understand scarcity when it comes to products. Limited drops work. Exclusive access works. Invitations work.<\/p>\n
But we don\u2019t talk as much about scarcity when it comes to attention. Being completely unavailable for a few hours is starting to feel like a luxury.<\/p>\n
Think about how rare it is to go to dinner without checking your phone. To spend two hours doing something without taking a picture. To be somewhere without knowing what everyone else is doing at the same time.<\/p>\n
Brands can create spaces for that. That doesn\u2019t mean every company needs to start locking up customers\u2019 phones at the door. It means we should start thinking beyond digital engagement when we\u2019re trying to build relationships.<\/p>\n
A skincare company can host a monthly walking club. A restaurant can create a recurring dinner series where strangers sit together. A fashion brand can teach people how to mend or customize clothing. A local business can create a club around something its customers already care about.<\/p>\n
The activity doesn\u2019t always have to center around selling the product. In fact, sometimes it\u2019s better if it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
One-off events are great for buzz. But I think the bigger opportunity is ritual.<\/p>\n
This is something I keep coming back to in marketing.<\/p>\n
People like having somewhere to go. They like becoming a regular. They like recognizing people. They like being part of something where eventually they know the rules, the jokes and the other people in the room.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when an audience starts becoming an actual community. And no, creating a hashtag and calling your customers a community does not make them one.<\/p>\n
Community happens when people would still want to interact with each other even if your brand stopped talking. For entrepreneurs, this doesn\u2019t have to require a huge experiential marketing budget. Start small.<\/p>\n
Ask yourself what your customers already enjoy doing. Then find a way to bring 10 or 20 of them together around it. Make it good enough that they want to come back. Then do it again.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t immediately worry about scaling it. Some things become valuable precisely because they don\u2019t scale perfectly.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m certainly not suggesting brands abandon social media, email or digital marketing. Those tools are how many people will discover you in the first place. The opportunity is what happens next.<\/p>\n
Maybe someone finds your running club on Instagram and then spends Saturday morning running with 30 people instead of scrolling.<\/p>\n
Maybe they see your dinner series on TikTok and then spend three hours talking to strangers.<\/p>\n
Maybe they discover a class through an influencer and then spend the evening learning something they\u2019ve never done before.<\/p>\n
In those situations, digital marketing did its job. It got someone off digital.<\/p>\n
I think we\u2019re entering a period where people\u2019s attention is so constantly being fought over that protecting it can actually become part of the experience a brand provides.<\/p>\n
The brands that understand this won\u2019t necessarily disappear from our phones. They\u2019ll just give us something worth putting them down for.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
For most of my career in marketing, brands have been obsessed with one thing: getting more of people\u2019s attention. More time on your website. More email opens. More engagement. More content. More notifications. More reasons for someone to pick up their phone and interact with your brand.<\/p>\n
But lately, I think we\u2019re starting to see people crave the exact opposite. They want a reason to put their phones down.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re seeing people get excited about analog hobbies again. Dinner parties. Run clubs. Book clubs. Mahjong nights. Crafting. In-person events. Even phone-free experiences where the whole point is that you aren\u2019t documenting every second of what you\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n