Unconscious automatic attention makes brand messages imprint without our awareness

Evidence

From which comes the necessity of identifying a first stratum of AUTOMATIC ATTENTION within which – in a complex relationship of suggestion, attenuation, reinforcement, and filtering with the other cerebral systems – a ‘perceptive system’ engages in an initial labour of identification without intention, without consciousness and without apparent effort from the subject. Once we have a whole series of cognitive processes taking place in us without our knowledge, it becomes problematic to determine who is (or is not) attentive to what. Even if I take advantage of an ad break to telephone a friend, do brands not print their message in me without my realizing it, from the moment they have worked out how to introduce the equivalent of my name? — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 362

Categorization

• XREF: Directly extends the cocktail party effect into the digital-advertising thesis the reader is building — the ‘equivalent of my name’ is algorithmic personalization. — connects to: Unconsciously primed concepts trigger corresponding behaviors in people; Large agencies industrialized advertising into an endless machine for attention capture — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 183; Attention theories have long split attention into automatic and intentional spheres — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 359
• SEED: The question of whether ads ‘print themselves in us’ via personalized triggers (the name-equivalent) is a sharp angle for an essay on covert attention capture.

Broader Connections

• Unconsciously primed concepts trigger corresponding behaviors in people #corroborates (0.85)
• Attention theories have long split attention into automatic and intentional spheres #expands (0.78) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 359
• Large agencies industrialized advertising into an endless machine for attention capture #expands (0.72) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 183