Pay attention. No, seriously. Stop doing other stuff and pay attention.

Here’s a news flash: tomorrow’s adults don’t pay attention to any one thing at a time. This is not news, or shouldn’t be. But it definitely underscores how difficult it is to garner attention in the oversaturated, always-on environment of the post-media marketplace. In all this talk about Web 2.0 and convergence, we need to recognize that the customer is changing, too. Forget Web 2.0. Think Consumer 2.0. It’s me-commerce, not e-commerce. It’s putting the “me” in meme marketing. You need to find a door or a window in the wall of sound surrounding Consumer 2.0 without assuming that running into that wall harder is the right approach. In an increasingly loud world, the winner doesn’t sell bigger speakers. The winner sells earplugs.