Integrity in the Attention Economy: 5 Responsible Marketing Frameworks Inspired by The Siren’s Call

Jen Carroll

In his new release, The Sirens' Call, Chris Hayes warns we aren't just competing for market share—we're fighting for scarce cognitive bandwidth in an attention-hostile world. In this article, I explore five responsible marketing frameworks inspired by Hayes that help brands navigate the attention economy with integrity by shifting from exploitation to conservation.

What if our marketing strategies need a fundamental reframing? While targeting, personalization, and engagement metrics remain essential, Chris Hayes’ new book, The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource, reveals this truth: the attention economy has radically transformed the landscape in which these tools operate.

In a world where the average person encounters thousands of brand messages daily, the real scarcity in marketing isn’t data, distribution channels, or consumer touchpoints—it’s human attention, the one resource we can’t manufacture or scale.

The attention economy isn’t just an abstract concept. It’s the fundamental reality that determines whether your marketing succeeds or fails.

If we take Hayes’ arguments seriously (and I do), then his work has profound implications for anyone in the business of communication. Those of us in marketing, advertising, and public relations must understand that we’re not just competing for market share or brand awareness—we’re competing for increasingly scarce cognitive bandwidth in an attention-hostile environment.

This presents both an ethical challenge and a strategic opportunity. How can we develop marketing frameworks that respect the finite nature of attention while still achieving business objectives? How might we shift from exploiting attention to conserving it? By examining Hayes’ insights and applying them to marketing practice, we can create more sustainable, ethical approaches that build genuine connections rather than contributing to digital noise.

Feel like reading this will require too much of your attention? Skip to the bottom for the TL;DR version.

Also, if you’re also a philosophy geek like my dear friend Shelly P. Johnson, Ph.D., lecturer, author, and blogger at Resilient and More, you will love the in-depth look Hayes offers into what philosophers have said about humans and attention.

The Attention Paradox: Why Marketers Need a Paradigm Shift

As marketers, we’re in a deeply ironic position. We intuitively understand the attention economy because our entire profession is built on competing for it. Yet Hayes’ analysis in The Sirens’ Call reveals something more profound: we’re active participants in creating the very crisis that makes our work increasingly difficult.

From commodity to crisis

Hayes cuts through a common misconception—that data is the new oil—with stark clarity. No, attention is the new oil. While data remains abundant and ever-expanding (and we should absolutely protect it!), human attention is strictly finite. This fundamental imbalance creates a market dynamic where value derives from scarcity, making attention increasingly precious.

What’s transformative about Hayes’ framework is his recognition that attention isn’t just another resource to be optimized—it’s a “fictitious commodity,” something inseparable from our very humanity. He says the “alienation we feel is born of the tension between attention as a market commodity and attention as the substance of our lives.”

This isn’t just philosophical hand-wringing. For marketers, it represents a fundamental paradox that traditional marketing frameworks fail to address:

When attention capitalists want to increase supply, they have no means of creating it; they must instead find new ways to take it from us. (Hayes)

Every campaign we launch, every piece of content we create, every touchpoint we optimize—all exist in a zero-sum attention marketplace. The way to increase one’s share isn’t to grow the pie, but rather to take bigger slices away from competitors and anyone else who is trying to do the same. We’re not just competing with direct rivals but contributing to an overall system that Hayes describes as attentional warlordism.

The recognition deficit

Perhaps most compelling is Hayes’ distinction between attention and recognition. Drawing on one of G.W.F. Hegel’s famous passages in Phenomenology of Spirit, the master-slave dialectic, Hayes says what humans fundamentally desire isn’t mere attention but genuine recognition—to be seen, fully and truly, by other humans.

This creates a fundamental paradox online, particularly with social media and any other type of virtual communities: the pursuit through fame of a thing fame cannot provide. Like celebrities, brands can capture massive attention while still failing to achieve the deeper connection they seek with audiences. We’re left with a synthetic form of a sublime experience.

For marketers, this insight may lead to a reconsideration of metrics and goals. Views, impressions, click-through rates—these measure attention capture, not meaningful recognition. Social media engagement might simulate connection while actually deepening alienation.

Social attention from strangers is the psychological equivalent of empty calories. Our phones are a buffet on which we gorge ourselves. We are both stuffed and starved.

Chris Hayes

Information Devours Attention

A fundamental challenge for today’s marketers lies in what Herbert Simon, Nobel Prize-winning economist and cognitive psychologist, identified decades ago—that “in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients.”

This principle has profound implications for how we approach messaging strategy and marketing communications in an era of digital noise.

The information-processing dilemma

Hayes highlights Simon’s compelling insight about information-processing systems:

An information-processing subsystem will reduce the net demand on the rest of the organization’s attention only if it absorbs more information previously received by others than it produces… To be an attention conserver for an organization, an information-processing system must be an information condenser.

This concept transforms how we should view our role as marketers. Traditional marketing frameworks focus on generating and distributing more content across more channels to capture attention. Yet Simon and Hayes suggest a counterintuitive approach: the most valuable marketing systems might be those that reduce rather than increase the attention demands placed on our audience.

Consider Google’s original value proposition—to help users find exactly what they need in the vast ocean of internet content. As perhaps the original online information condenser, Google enabled us to focus on just the small bit we were searching for. Not surprisingly, given the all-but-irresistible opportunity, Google gradually shifted from attention conservation to attention exploitation, building its empire on monetizing the results in SERPs, and I fully acknowledge that premise is what SEO consulting is built on, as well.

The collapse of attentional regimes

Also relevant to marketing communications professionals is Hayes’ concept of “attentional regimes”—the formal and informal rules that govern how attention is directed and managed in any context. He observes that everywhere you look, attentional regimes have collapsed.

This collapse creates chaos in the marketplace of ideas. Hayes writes:

Where there is no attentional regime, no formal set of institutions to force public attention on a topic, no basic rules for who will speak when and who will listen, the need for attention becomes exclusive; it swallows debate, it swallows persuasion, it swallows discourse whole.

For marketers, this explains the increasingly desperate tactics used to capture fleeting attention—from controversy marketing to manufactured urgency to algorithmic manipulation. Of course, these approaches ultimately accelerate attention depletion rather than building sustainable communication channels.

Digital Communication Decay & Its Marketing Implications

The digital landscape that marketers navigate today bears little resemblance to the utopian vision that accompanied the early internet. As Hayes notes, what we face instead is an environment of profound decay—”a place filled with slapdash content contorted just to rank highly in the algorithm.” (Beware the SEO who promises magical results with tactics that are no longer relevant and, in some cases, never were.) This digital deterioration carries significant consequences for how we approach marketing communication and messaging strategy.

The content saturation crisis

Hayes uses a powerful metaphor from the film WALL-E to illustrate our current predicament: “Like WALL-E, we are surrounded by mountains…of digital waste.” The sheer volume of content created daily has created an environment where quality is increasingly difficult to discern from noise. (Great minds think alike! I wrote about WALL-E and internet decay in 2024.)

For marketers, this saturation presents a fundamental challenge to traditional content-focused strategies. When everyone is screaming for attention, simply adding more voices to the cacophony becomes counterproductive. This explains why many brands experience diminishing returns on their content investments despite increasing production.

The massive 2024 Google API leak, which revealed extensive use of behavioral signals and user engagement metrics in search rankings, confirms Hayes’ assessment. The leak exposed features like “goodClicks,” “badClicks,” and “lastLongestClicks,” suggesting that user behavior—not just content volume or keyword optimization—now drives visibility in search results.

The three horsemen of digital decay

Hayes identifies three particularly problematic tactics that accelerate digital communication breakdown: trolling, whataboutism, and conspiracism. Though his analysis focuses on political discourse, these same dynamics plague marketing communication:

Trolling – Deliberately provocative content designed to trigger emotional reactions rather than provide value. Hayes notes that trolls create a no-win situation: “damned if you ignore them and damned if you pay attention.” Many brands have adopted controversy marketing as a trolling-adjacent tactic, creating artificial outrage to drive engagement.
Whataboutism – The redirection of attention from one topic to another, avoiding substantive engagement. In marketing, this manifests as the constant introduction of new campaigns, channels, and messages without building depth in any single area, contributing to audience fatigue.
Conspiracism – The creation of elaborate, attention-grabbing narratives divorced from reality. Marketing’s version includes the increasingly outlandish claims made for products and services, with Hayes noting that “conspiracies are more attention grabbing than reality. A big lie is often more attentionally compelling than a list of small truths.”

The spam problem

Hayes defines spam in its broadest sense: all the things we don’t want to pay attention to that want our attention. By this definition, a good portion of today’s marketing could be classified as spam—not just obvious scams but any communication that takes more than it gives in return.

“The way spammers use our attention is exploitive,” Hayes writes. “They waste our time for their benefit.”

This creates a sustainability crisis in marketing communications, where diminishing returns force ever more aggressive attention-grabbing tactics. Hayes says you can never defeat spam; you can only manage it. Like the weeds that inevitably pop up in a beautiful garden, spam will grow wherever people legitimately focus their attention.

The enshittification of platforms

Hayes cites tech theorist Cory Doctorow’s concept of “enshittification”—the American Dialect Society’s 2023 word of the year—to describe the degradation of digital platforms:

First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

Fun fact: I read Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom last year as part of an awesome online book club, Leaders Who Fiction. Join us!

Enshittification directly impacts marketing sustainability. Platforms that once offered organic reach now demand payment for visibility. Algorithms that once rewarded quality content now prioritize native advertising and platform-specific formats. The result is a perpetual chase for marketers, constantly adapting to platform changes while delivering diminishing returns on investment.

For small and mid-sized businesses with limited resources, this enshittification creates particular challenges. As Hayes observes, the attentional version of what Thomas Hobbes described as the state of nature favoring those with the deepest pockets, not necessarily those with the most valuable offerings.

The social attention trap

As I touched on earlier, Hayes makes a crucial distinction between social attention and social relationships that has profound implications for social media marketing. He writes, “Social attention is necessary for all the other forms of human socialization, but not sufficient… social attention isn’t inherently reciprocal, unlike the social relationships that give life meaning.”

This explains why social media metrics like followers, likes, and shares often fail to translate into meaningful business outcomes.

They measure attention, not relationship. As Hayes notes, the fundamental marketing challenge becomes “the difference between being nourished and being full”—brands can achieve high visibility while still failing to create genuine connections.

The broken contract between marketers and audiences

Perhaps most concerning is Hayes’ insight about the fundamental relationship between attention-seekers and attention-givers in the digital age. He describes, as I mentioned above, the collapse of attentional regimes, which has led to a broken contract:

The reality of the attention age is that everywhere you look, both formal and substantive attentional regimes have collapsed. And where there is no attentional regime… the need for attention becomes exclusive; it swallows debate, it swallows persuasion, it swallows discourse whole.

For marketers, this explains why old messaging frameworks increasingly fail to resonate. When audiences no longer trust the underlying systems that deliver marketing messages, they develop broad-spectrum resistance to all communications, regardless of value or intent.

The marketer's dilemma

Last year’s Google API leak confirms what Hayes suggests: the tech infrastructure of our attention economy increasingly rewards those who can engineer attention-grabbing content, not necessarily those providing genuine value. We face a choice: continue participating fully in the attention economy as it exists or slowly begin to pioneer new approaches that respect attention’s finite nature.

The challenge isn’t just ethical but existential for our profession. As Hayes notes,

A public sphere wholly dominated by commercial platforms seeking to maximize the aggregate amount of attention they draw in order to monetize that attention will produce a public that has a difficult time sustaining focus.

This means diminishing returns on traditional approaches as audiences develop deeper resistance to attention exploitation. It means shorter attention windows and higher costs to capture them. It means more noise drowning out even the most carefully crafted messaging strategy.

But it also means opportunity for those willing to rethink fundamentals. Hayes observes the beginnings of what he terms attentional farmers’ markets—emerging alternatives to dominant attention market models, similar to how organic food emerged as an alternative to industrial agriculture. Forward-thinking marketers can position themselves at the forefront of this shift, developing frameworks that conserve rather than exploit attention.

The paradigm shift begins with a simple but profound realization: we’re not just selling products enhanced by marketing but operating in an attention ecosystem where every campaign either contributes to sustainability or accelerates depletion.

While Hayes’ assessment may seem bleak, it also reveals strategic opportunities for forward-thinking marketers. As digital decay accelerates, brands that position themselves as attention conservators rather than attention extractors can achieve meaningful differentiation.

The API leak that exposed Google’s internal ranking factors confirms what Hayes suggests: metrics related to user satisfaction and genuine engagement will increasingly determine visibility. Marketers who prioritize ethical communication strategies—focusing on quality over quantity, depth over reach, and recognition over mere attention—may find themselves with a significant competitive advantage in the attention marketplace.

From Attention Exploitation to Attention Conservation: an Opportunity for Marketers

For ethical marketers concerned with brand differentiation and marketing sustainability, Hayes offers a path forward through attention conservation rather than exploitation. By shifting approaches, marketers can not only address the ethical challenges of the attention economy but also build more sustainable, effective communication frameworks for the digital age.

This requires fundamentally rethinking our messaging frameworks with principles like:

Value-to-attention ratio: Ensuring every piece of communication provides more value than the attention it consumes.
Information condensing: Distilling complex information into its most essential elements in select places. It’s imperative to learn when people want something complex simplified and when they want a detailed explanation about a topic.
Attention respect: Recognizing that every claim on audience attention comes with an ethical obligation to use it responsibly.
Marketing minimalism: Focusing on fewer, more meaningful interactions rather than maximum reach and frequency.

These principles align with Hayes’ observation about emerging consumer preferences, creating opportunities for brands willing to pioneer more responsible practices:

I think we are very likely to see the growth of a parallel market for alternative attention products, like the markets for natural food, organic farming, and farmers’ markets.

The authenticity imperative: a shift from attention to recognition

I’ve heard marketers talk for years about the importance of brand authenticity, but I have never run across any of them who explained that bridging the chasm between attention and recognition is the key. This insight should reshape our approach as professional communicators. You can try to capture attention through content that sounds genuine. You can use increasingly sophisticated techniques. But genuine recognition requires mutual respect between communicator and audience.

As Hayes explains through Alexandre Kojève’s interpretation of Hegel: “We can only experience the existential satisfaction of recognition from those who we ourselves truly recognize. We can only have our own personhood affirmed by other people we grasp deeply as persons themselves.”

This philosophical insight has practical implications for marketing differentiation. Brands that treat their audience as mere attention resources to be harvested will increasingly face resistance, while those that demonstrate genuine respect and reciprocity have the opportunity to build deeper connections.

In a marketplace where attention is increasingly scarce and exploitative tactics increasingly common, the most powerful differentiation may come from being an attention conservator rather than an attention predator. The next generation of marketing frameworks must shift from maximizing impressions to optimizing recognition—and that requires a fundamental rethinking of how we approach messaging strategy in the digital communication landscape.

Five ethical, attention-based marketing frameworks

In a digital environment characterized by attention scarcity and information overload, marketers need new frameworks that balance effectiveness with ethical responsibility. Drawing on Hayes’ insights from The Sirens’ Call, we can develop approaches that respect attention’s finite nature while still achieving business objectives. The following frameworks offer practical guidance for marketers seeking to navigate the attention economy with integrity.

#1. The Recognition Framework: beyond attention to connection

Hayes draws a crucial distinction between attention and recognition based on Hegelian philosophy. While attention can be captured, recognition must be mutually granted—it requires seeing and being seen as fully human. This insight transforms how we might approach marketing communication:

Core Principles:

Move beyond a focus (or obsession) with metrics that measure attention grabbing (clicks, views) to those that measure meaningful engagement.
Create marketing that acknowledges the humanity of both sender and receiver.
When possible, design communication that invites dialogue rather than simply broadcasting messages.

Practical Application:

Recognize that volume-based KPIs have less meaning than relationship-based metrics like repeat engagement, direct interactions, and community participation.
Develop content that positions your brand as a fellow participant in conversation rather than an attention demander.
Where it makes sense, build opportunities for audience contribution and co-creation into campaigns.

As Hayes notes, “We can only experience the existential satisfaction of recognition from those who we ourselves truly recognize.”

For brands, this means demonstrating genuine respect for audience intelligence and agency before expecting engagement in return.

#2. The Attention Conservation System

Herbert Simon’s concept of information-processing subsystems offers a powerful framework for ethical marketing. Hayes explains, “To be an attention conserver for an organization, an information-processing system must be an information condenser.” Applied to marketing communication, this framework suggests:

Core Principles:

Respect attention as a precious resource to be preserved, not exploited.
Offer value to those who choose to pay attention to what you create.

Practical Application:

Develop content hierarchies that allow users to access exactly the depth of information they need—no more, no less.
Create information filters that help audiences navigate complexity in your industry or product category.
Prioritize clarity and accessibility over volume and frequency.

Google’s original value proposition embodies this framework—helping users find exactly what they need in a vast sea of information. Brands that position themselves as attention conservers rather than attention demanders can achieve similar differentiation, addressing the problem of spam in its broadest sense.

#3. The Attentional Regime Framework

With the loss of attentional regimes (as mentioned above, the formal and informal rules governing attention allocation), we have inherited a chaotic digital environment where attention is its own end, to be grabbed by any means necessary.

Marketers can counter this trend by establishing clear attentional regimes for their brand communication:

Core Principles:

Develop consistent, transparent rules for how you engage audience attention.
Create predictable patterns of communication that build trust and reduce cognitive load.
Respect boundaries and consent in all attention requests.

Practical Application:

Establish clear communication cadences that audiences can anticipate (rather than constant interruption).
Develop explicit permission-based systems for different types of messaging.
Create content taxonomies that allow audiences to selectively engage based on their needs and interests.

Hayes argues attention “is hard to direct, hard to attract, and hard to control.” Rather than fighting these limitations, the Attentional Regime Framework works with them by creating structured environments where attention can be meaningfully directed by mutual agreement.

#4. The Authenticity-to-Automation Balance

The Google API leak revealed extensive use of AI and machine learning in evaluating content quality. Hayes anticipates these developments, describing a potential “boring apocalypse” where AI both generates and evaluates information. This creates a framework tension that marketers must navigate:

Core Principles:

Balance efficiency-driven automation with attention-worthy authenticity.
Recognize the diminishing returns of algorithmic optimization without human value.
Prioritize genuine human connection in an increasingly automated landscape.

Practical Application:

Use AI and automation tools for information processing and routine communications while preserving human attention for high-value interactions.
Develop hybrid approaches that leverage technology for efficiency while maintaining authentic voice and perspective.
Create transparent boundaries between automated and human communications.

This framework addresses Hayes’ concern:

Almost any technology that’s good at screening information to preserve our attention is also going to be good at generating things that attempt to capture and exploit our attention.

By consciously balancing automation with authenticity, marketers can avoid contributing to the problem Hayes identifies.

#5. The Local-to-Global Attention Ratio

Hayes identifies a particular paradox of the digital age: “Millions isolated, alone, and dying from a lack of meaningful social attention while too much social attention has been democratized.”

This insight suggests a framework for balancing different types of attention in marketing communication:

Core Principles:

Recognize different qualitative types of attention (local vs. global, deep vs. shallow).
Balance broader reach with deeper connection in marketing strategy.
Prioritize relationship-building within defined communities over boundless expansion.

Practical Application:

Develop multi-tiered communication strategies that serve different audience segments with appropriate depth.
Create community-focused initiatives alongside broader brand awareness campaigns.
Measure success through balanced attention metrics rather than maximizing any single dimension.

This framework addresses Hayes’ observation about the growing demand for attentional farmers’ markets—alternatives to dominant attention market models that emphasize quality, sustainability, and local connection over mass production and consumption.

Implementation across marketing functions

These frameworks can transform how we approach specific marketing activities:

Messaging Strategy:

Develop messaging that conserves rather than consumes attention.
Create clear hierarchies of information that respect audience time and cognitive load.
Balance persuasion with recognition—addressing audiences as equal participants.

Content Creation:

Focus on depth and utility over volume and frequency.
Create “slow content” designed for intentional rather than impulsive consumption.
Develop formats that invite meaningful engagement rather than passive scrolling.

Digital Communication:

Establish clear boundaries and expectations for different communication channels.
Create contextual relevance that justifies attention requests.
Build consistent patterns that reduce cognitive burden on audiences.

Brand Experience:

Design touchpoints that foster recognition rather than mere attention.
Create opportunities for authentic connection within defined communities.
Develop experiences that resist rather than accelerate attentional fragmentation.

By implementing these frameworks, marketers can position themselves at the forefront of what Hayes envisions as an emerging alternative to the dominant attention market model—one built on quality, sustainability, and mutual respect rather than exploitation and extraction.

Pioneering Attention-ethical Marketing

As we look to the future of marketing in the attention economy, we must move beyond merely acknowledging the challenges Hayes identifies to pioneering genuine solutions. The opportunity for forward-thinking marketers isn’t just to adapt to the current attention landscape but to help shape a more sustainable alternative.

Coming soon (I hope): attentional 'farmers' markets'

Hayes’ analogy to creating an experience like farmers’ markets for attention could be a tangible business opportunity. Just as consumers increasingly pay premiums for ethical, sustainable food products, we’re seeing emerging willingness to pay for attention-respectful experiences.

Consider the resurgence of print media, paid newsletter subscriptions, and ad-free digital experiences. These aren’t merely nostalgic trends but indicators of audience hunger for marketing communications that honor rather than exploit their attention. Brands positioning themselves within this emerging market can achieve meaningful differentiation while building deeper audience connections.

From reactive to regenerative marketing

The true paradigm shift comes when we move from seeing marketing as attention extraction to attention regeneration. That’s because the extractive model of seeking attention is ultimately unsustainable. Regenerative marketing, by contrast, creates experiences so valuable that they actually expand audience capacity for engagement.

When marketing genuinely helps people solve problems, learn something valuable, or connect meaningfully with others, it can actually increase rather than deplete attentional resources. This approach transforms marketing from a zero-sum competition to a mutually beneficial exchange.

Metrics that matter in the recognition economy

To operationalize these frameworks, we need too add new metrics to our data analytics reporting, ones that measure more of what truly matters. Instead of optimizing for impressions, clicks, and views—all measures of attention capture—we should focus on indicators of meaningful recognition:

Depth metrics: Time well spent rather than just time spent
Relationship indicators: Reciprocal engagement rather than passive consumption
Value exchange measurements: Audience-perceived benefit relative to attention invested
Trust indicators: Willingness to grant future attention based on past experiences

These metrics align with what the Google API leak revealed about “OriginalContentScore” and “lastLongestClicks,” suggesting that even algorithmic systems are evolving to recognize the difference between capturing and respecting attention.

Professional responsibility in the attention age

As marketing professionals, we have a unique responsibility in the attention economy. We are both contributors to the problem and potentially part of solution. Every campaign we develop, every content piece we create, every channel we use either reinforces extractive attention patterns or helps establish more sustainable alternatives.

This isn’t just about individual ethics but professional leadership. By demonstrating that attention-respectful marketing can deliver superior business results, we create permission for broader industry transformation.

As Hayes notes regarding other ethical movements, this change in direction will at first seem quirky and countercultural, but where consumer demand emerges, business models follow.

Toward More Sustainable Marketing Frameworks for the Future

The challenges Hayes identifies in The Sirens’ Call aren’t simply obstacles to navigate but opportunities to redefine what effective marketing means in the digital age. By recognizing attention not just as a commodity to capture but as a precious human resource to steward, we can develop approaches that deliver better results for businesses while respecting the cognitive limits of our audiences.

The frameworks outlined here—Recognition, Attention Conservation, Attentional Regimes, Authenticity-Automation Balance, and Local-Global Attention Ratio—provide practical starting points for this transformation. They allow us to move beyond superficial tactical adjustments to fundamental strategic realignment with the emerging attention reality.

Most importantly, they position marketers not merely as participants in the attention economy but as architects of its more sustainable future. By pioneering approaches that value quality over quantity, depth over reach, and recognition over mere visibility, we can help create the attentional farmers’ markets that Hayes envisions—spaces where attention is exchanged respectfully rather than extracted exploitatively.

Just as the demand for organic, locally grown food moved from niche to mainstream, ethical attention practices have the potential to redefine marketing norms. The marketers who lead this shift won’t just be more ethical—they’ll ultimately be more effective in a landscape where audience trust becomes the scarcest and most valuable resource of all.

The question isn’t whether the attention marketplace will evolve, but who will lead that evolution. Forward-thinking marketers have the opportunity to be at the forefront, developing frameworks that respect attention’s finite nature while still achieving business objectives. In doing so, they won’t just be adapting to the attention crisis—they’ll be helping solve it.

If these frameworks resonate with your communication challenges, we’d love to explore how attention-ethical marketing might transform your approach. Contact us for a conversation about creating messaging that respects attention while delivering results.

TL;DR

Chris Hayes’ The Sirens’ Call reveals how the attention economy creates a paradox for marketers: we contribute to the very attention scarcity that makes our work increasingly difficult.
Traditional marketing frameworks focus on capturing attention as a commodity, ignoring Hayes’ insight that attention is “a fictitious commodity” inseparable from our humanity.
The digital communication landscape is experiencing rapid decay, with content oversaturation, algorithm manipulation, and platform “enshittification” creating diminishing returns on traditional approaches.
Five ethical marketing frameworks offer alternatives: Recognition Framework, Attention Conservation System, Attentional Regime Framework, Authenticity-Automation Balance, and Local-Global Attention Ratio.
Forward-thinking marketers can lead the development of “attentional farmers markets”—alternatives to dominant attention market models that emphasize quality, sustainability, and genuine connection.
These approaches aren’t just more ethical—they’re likely to deliver superior results as audiences increasingly value and reward attention-respectful marketing communication.
The opportunity is to shift from attention extraction to attention regeneration, creating experiences so valuable they expand rather than deplete audience capacity for engagement.