138: [BEST OF] Professor Karen Nelson-Field schools us on all things attention.

It’s been 5 years since Call to Action® captured our first of what’s now over 130 heroes and allies from the industry front lines to have a chin-wag with. To celebrate, we’re rereleasing a choice cut of our favourite episodes as part of a ‘Best Of’ series. 

In February 2022, we stuck a fake shark fin on our back and lurked in the waters off Adelaide to catch the attention of one of the industry’s most respected researchers; Prof. Karen Nelson-Field. 

Hell-bent on fighting the broken media ecosystem as founder and CEO at Amplified Intelligence, Karen is also an author and alumni of the world-renowned Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. When she’s not binge-watching Home & Away (yes, she’s still a fan), Karen’s research into the measurement of attention has made her a global authority on media effectiveness.

Point your ears this way as Karen talks on her 10 years at Ehrenberg-Bass, skateboarding cats, myth-busting Facebook likes, going viral, why attention is an important metric, how to measure it and more. And strap in as Karen finally answers the red-hot question of whether our attention spans really are becoming shorter than a goldfi-

Oh, look, some links… 

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Follow Karen on LinkedIn 
And on Twitter 
Here’s her website
And, Karen kindly dedicates this episode to the bullshit-detecting bulldog himself, Bob Hoffman

Grab yourself her books:
Viral Marketing: The Science of Sharing 
The Attention Economy and How Media Works 

Timestamps
(01:50) - Quick fire questions
(03:15) - First jobs and early fascination with advertising 
(08:40) - What she learnt about media from cinema 
(14:00) - Her time at Ehrenberg-Bass 
(15:45) - Myth-busting Facebook likes 
(19:15) - A deep dive into the attention economy 
(25:30) - Are our attention spans really getting shorter? 
(30:00) - Single piece of advice to marketers to better understand attention
(34:30) - Listener questions 
(38:15) - 4 pertinent posers 

Karen’s book recommendations are: 
Play Bigger by Al Ramadan, Dave Peterson, Christopher Lochhead & Kevin Maney
That Will Never Work by Marc Randolph 

Feel better about marketing with Episode 81 of Call to Action® with Professor Karen Nelson-Field. 

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