The Next Economy Isn’t About Attention… It’s About Transformation… And Intimacy

I’ve been thinking a lot about attention lately.

Not how to get it (very tiring)… but what it actually means. Because for years… we’ve been told the same thing: We’re living in The Attention Economy. I sold this idea (consistently and relentlessly) as a marketing agency owner for years. Everything was a battle for eyeballs… clicks… engagement… time. And for a while… that felt right (and helped build the marketing industry into the juggernaut it is today). But the more I stare at The Attention Economy, the more I feel it has shape-shifted into what I call, The Intimacy Economy. The idea of “attention” feels incomplete and more hollow (to me) than ever before in a world where brands can give consumers that very unique feeling that their connections were made just for them.

Maybe attention was never the endgame… just the entry point?

That realization really crystallized for me while editing my conversation with Joseph Pine for this week’s episode of Thinking With Mitch Joel. Joe has been mapping this progression for decades (in his own way). If his name rings a bell, it’s because Joe coined the phrase, The Experience Economy (and the famed book by the same name) and most recently published, The Transformation Economy. So think about the link between commodities… goods… services… experiences… and now… something else…

Transformation.

Not what you sell… not even what people experience. But what they become because of it. That’s a very different lens (and it maps perfectly to The Intimacy Economy). And, if I’m being honest, a much more uncomfortable one for my own vision of what marketing can be. Mostly because it forces a question that most businesses don’t want to ask: Did this actually change anyone? Not, did they like it… did they click… did they convert… but, did it matter? Did it leave them different?

That’s a much higher bar… and a much more honest one.

Somewhere along the way, we diluted the idea of “experience.” We turned it into a business process… frictionless, seamless, easy. And sure, that feels like it makes a brand better. But it rarely means anything more. Because if you look around, a lot of what we call “experience” today is just optimization. Faster checkout, cleaner UX, better recommendations. All important and useful… but none of it is transformative.

And in a world where everything is getting faster… easier… more automated (thanks, AI)…

That kind of improvement starts to blur together and stops being a differentiator. Which leads to a bigger shift that I can’t stop thinking about: Attention is becoming abundant… but meaning is not. Said another way, your brand isn’t competing for time… it’s competing for impact. Imagine if your business was making your customers healthier, wealthier, wiser, more capable, more aware… actually better.

Not in some vague brand-purpose kind of way…

But in a real, tangible… “I am different because of this” kind of way. And that’s where things get harder (and Joe goes deep on this in our conversation). We all know that transformation is messy. It takes time, it requires effort and it involves friction. Nobody accidentally transforms… a person chooses to. Which means businesses don’t “transform” people. They guide them, they create the conditions and they can build the path. But the customer has to walk it.

And that’s a very different responsibility than just capturing attention.

Joe puts it even more bluntly: If your business isn’t fostering human flourishing… it’s a racket. Yeesh…that’s not marketing mulch… that’s a real brand challenge. Because it forces you to look at what you’re actually doing. Not what you say you do…
not what your deck says… not what your campaign promises… but what changes… because you exist.

And maybe that’s where we are right now?

Not in a fight for attention… but in a reckoning about intention. What are we actually building? What are we actually optimizing for? What makes people feel that intimacy with our brand? And more importantly, what are we helping people become?

Because in this new economy, that’s the only metric that won’t get commoditized.

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