Mobile is Everything for ESPN, and Soon Will be for Everyone Else

ESPN revolutionized TV. Almost single-handedly, it made cable TV a must-have service for tens of millions of people.

But now ESPN's future is in doubt as more people cut the cable cord. And where are those people going? 

To their phones.

To help it succeed on that platform, ESPN is developing "a smartphone-first content effort that combines personalization, journalism, video and personality,” as the internal memo announcing the change described it.

According to Chad Millman, ESPN's new vice president and editorial director for domestic digital content, the broadcaster is going in this direction because "mobile is everything. We always have to be thinking about mobile first. If we’re thinking about anything else, we’re failing the audience."

And what does it mean to do mobile first?

"You need to keep re-imagining how things look," Millman said in an article in Nieman Lab.

Among other things, this means how it looks on a phone and how long the headline is. 

"What is it (the headline) going to look like and where is it going to cut off on a mobile device," he said. 

What makes all of this challenging, he added, is that pages destined for mobile are designed on a desktop.

"There’s no magic formula to simulate what it looks like on a phone," he said. "So you’re decreasing your browser before you publish it, you’re checking it on your phone as soon as you publish it to fix something right away."

Creating for mobile also means not trying to make it look like ESPN on TV.

"We’re creating for the platform or device that we most expect people to see it on, and not thinking that we have to create something that looks like it belongs on television. 

"Can you understand the story with the sound off? How long should it be? When are people dropping out of videos? 

"All of that stuff makes us rethink how we might have produced something even two or three years ago."

One example of ESPN's mobile-first strategy is its 60-second preview of the week in the NFL. The minute-long segment is designed, produced, and edited with mobile in mind. 

"It is quick cuts, it is tightly written, and it gives you information, but it does it quickly and in a sort of whimsical way. That is something that we wouldn’t have done a year ago," he said.

How quickly things change—in  the mid-2000s, when the web began to take off as a main vehicle of communication, media and others started to move from thinking print-first to web-first. 

There was a lot of agonizing back then over the need for shorter articles, and the end of an edition or issue-based mindset (see Life and Communications Unbundled, on this blog.)  

Now here we are, about a decade later, and we're beginning to hear talk about doing everything mobile-first. Which isn’t surprising, considering the growth of mobile around the world.

Today, mobile is first for ESPN. Soon it will be that way for everyone else.

Study Shows Attention Spans Today Shorter Than Goldfish or, I'm Sorry—We're You Talking to Me?

Intuitively, we know it to be true. But now research from Microsoft confirms that people today have shorter attention spans than goldfish.

According to the study, which surveyed 2,000 Canadians last year, a goldfish has an attention span of nine seconds. 

But people today generally can only stay focused on one thing for eight seconds.

“Heavy multi-screeners find it difficult to filter out irrelevant stimuli,” said the report. “They’re more easily distracted by multiple streams of media.”

Added Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella: “We are moving from a world where computing power was scarce to a place where it now is almost limitless, and where the true scarce commodity is increasingly human attention.”

The study also found that 19% of people leave a website within the first ten seconds—if they don’t immediately see what they are looking for, they’re gone.

On the positive side, the report says that our use of multiple screens and devices is training our brains to be better at multitasking.

What this means for marketers

For those of us trying to catch the attention of people online, this inability to pay attention means a) it is hard to catch attention and, b) it is hard to keep it.

Says the report: “With today’s digital lifestyle, marketers need to make an almost immediate impact before consumers switch off/move on.”

It goes on to say that people are “suckers for novelty. It's more exciting to jump from subject to subject or device to device than to concentrate on a single thing at any one time.”

Get to the point—quickly. “Hook consumers right off the bat with clear and concise messaging that’s communicated as early as possible,” says the report.

And since many people won’t read much on a web page, “craft headlines that can say it all.”

Be personal and relevant. Make sure your brand is “personal and communicate clear consumer value. How will paying attention make their life be better?”

Today’s marketing, it goes on to say, “is about instant gratification and appealing to consumers’ needs and desires to ensure your message is relevant.”

Be short and clear. “What consumers can see in one glance has everything to do with what they’ll do next,” the report says.

“If overwhelmed by input . . . their brain will stop taking it in. Exclude unnecessary information. Stick to the main message. If something doesn’t play a significant role, it’s not needed.”

(Those who know how to write journalistically, using the inverted pyramid style of writing,  will have an advantage here.)

Use rich media and movement.”Human survival has been based on the ability to focus on what’s most important (generally what’s moving),” the report says. “Harness the power of peripheral motion.”

“Rich media ads help capture attention and dramatically improve engagement.”

Include calls to action. What do you want people to do once they have read your content? Is it easy to find a donate button? A link for more information?

It’s a big challenge, especially for small non-profits with limited resources. But there’s no way around it.

Fortunately, there’s a bit of good news. According to the report, our increasingly digital lifestyles is also making us more efficient at processing information.

We are, apparently, able to do and recall more—even with less ability to pay attention.

And it you made it to the bottom of this article, congratulations on your great attention span!

When it comes to being focused, you are much better than a goldfish.

Unfortunately, there's no direct link to the PDF of this report. For more information, Google Microsoft attention span study.