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FOMO & Digital Trends: You Don’t Have To Catch Them All

"Must we become experts on Pokémon Marketing now?"

Jerry Silfwer
by Jerry Silfwer

Cover photo: @jerrysilfwer

Reading time: 5 min.

How do you escape FOMO—Fear Of Missing Out?

The oth­er day, Anne signed up for my mail­ing list. 

After leav­ing her email address, she was taken to a land­ing page where I asked her to share her biggest digit­al mar­ket­ing and com­mu­nic­a­tions chal­lenge. Anne’s biggest chal­lenge was to keep up with digit­al trends in today’s online landscape. 

Anne wrote:

“Must we become fuck­ing experts on ‘Pokémon Marketing’ now?”

I feel you, Anne. She shares her frus­tra­tion with hun­dreds of oth­er read­ers who have answered that same ques­tion over the years. 

How can one keep up in today’s wired world? 

Here we go:

Quicklinks 

The Digital Space is Too Big: Keeping Up Is Futile

You could pick a chan­nel like Youtube and immerse your­self only to real­ise that you must choose a more pre­cise focus. Now, you might try get­ting a handle on Let’s Play walk­throughs, only to learn that you must ded­ic­ate your­self to a par­tic­u­lar gam­ing genre.

Every time you scratch a new shiny digit­al sur­face, an even big­ger online uni­verse opens up. It’s not humanly pos­sible to keep up with all the new digit­al trends emer­ging all around us. 

As a pub­lic rela­tions pro­fes­sion­al who’s been into digit­al PR for dec­ades, I would sug­gest anoth­er approach. As I see it, it’ll be enough to keep up with those trends that will affect your business.

The trick, of course, is to spot those digit­al trends that truly mat­ter to you and your brand.

How Artificial Scarcity Works

The Principle of Scarcity

The prin­ciple of scarcity is well-estab­lished in sci­entif­ic lit­er­at­ure. If some­thing seems scarce, we anti­cip­ate our pos­sible regret of fail­ing to acquire the resource in time:

“In 2 exper­i­ments, a total of 200 female under­gradu­ates rated the value and attract­ive­ness of cook­ies that were either in abund­ant sup­ply or scarce sup­ply. […] Results indic­ate that (a) cook­ies in scarce sup­ply were rated as more desir­able than cook­ies in abund­ant sup­ply; (b) cook­ies were rated as more valu­able when their sup­ply changed from abund­ant to scarce than when they were con­stantly scarce; and © cook­ies scarce because of high demand were rated high­er than cook­ies that were scarce because of an acci­dent.“
Source: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1Worchel, S., Lee, J., & Adewole, A. (1975). Effects of sup­ply and demand on rat­ings of object value. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32(5), 906 – 914.

We are pro­grammed for sur­viv­al and will there­fore a) over­value items and ser­vices that are scarce and b) under­value those plen­ti­fully. 2The beha­viour is some­times called FOMO (fear of miss­ing out).

Creating arti­fi­cial scarcity (by lim­it­ing avail­ab­il­ity) is a power­ful PR strategy, but to avoid back­fir­ing, the PR pro­fes­sion­al must refrain from fram­ing the offer using untrue statements.

Learn more: The Power of Artificial Scarcity

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The Science Behind FOMO

FOMO is typ­ic­ally described as a per­vas­ive appre­hen­sion that oth­ers might be hav­ing reward­ing exper­i­ences from which one is absent and is char­ac­ter­ized by the desire to stay con­tinu­ally con­nec­ted with what oth­ers are doing.

FOMO is often asso­ci­ated with feel­ings of anxi­ety and dis­sat­is­fac­tion and has been linked to neg­at­ive out­comes such as lower mood and life sat­is­fac­tion, poor sleep qual­ity, and prob­lem­at­ic use of social media.

There is a grow­ing body of sci­entif­ic lit­er­at­ure explor­ing the concept of FOMO, or Fear of Missing Out. 

Here are some key studies:

  • Przybylski, A. K., Murayama, K., DeHaan, C. R., & Gladwell, V. (2013). Motivational, emo­tion­al, and beha­vi­or­al cor­rel­ates of fear of miss­ing out. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(4), 1841 – 1848. 
  • Baker, Z. G., Krieger, H., & LeRoy, A. S. (2016). Fear of miss­ing out: Relationships with depres­sion, mind­ful­ness, and phys­ic­al symp­toms. Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 2(3), 275 – 282. 
  • Elhai, J. D., Vasquez, J. K., Lustgarten, S. D., Levine, J. C., & Hall, B. J. (2018). Proneness to bore­dom medi­ates rela­tion­ships between prob­lem­at­ic smart­phone use with depres­sion and anxi­ety sever­ity. Social Science Computer Review, 36(6), 707 – 720. 
  • Franchina, V., Vanden Abeele, M., Van Rooij, A. J., Lo Coco, G., & De Marez, L. (2018). Fear of miss­ing out as a pre­dict­or of prob­lem­at­ic social media use and phub­bing beha­vi­or among Flemish adoles­cents. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 15(10), 2319. 

These stud­ies sug­gest that FOMO is a real psy­cho­lo­gic­al phe­nomen­on that can con­trib­ute to vari­ous issues, par­tic­u­larly in rela­tion to men­tal health and tech­no­logy use. 

As social media plays a sig­ni­fic­ant role in our lives, under­stand­ing and address­ing FOMO becomes increas­ingly important.

The Pointless Pokestop

The oth­er day in Stockholm, I walked past a loc­al store for office sup­plies. There was a Pokestop right out­side their store­front, as cir­cum­stance would have it. 3A Pokestop is a vir­tu­al in-game fea­ture of the pop­u­lar mobile game Pokémon Go, a game that blends with real-world loc­a­tions.

In an attempt to grab this mar­ket­ing oppor­tun­ity, they got into Pokémon Go and added lures to the Pokestop — which they advert­ised on a writ­ten sign in one of their win­dow dis­plays. 4Again, for those not up to speed with all things Niantic, a lure is a vir­tu­al item and part of the game. By pla­cing your lure at a Pokestop, you attract vir­tu­al creatures for oth­er play­ers to catch. … Continue read­ing

I got curi­ous and found a café across the street. In an hour, two Pokémon Go play­ers, less than 15 years old, stopped by the Pokestop out­side the store­front, but none cared about enter­ing the office sup­ply store.

Boldly, I assumed that Pokémon Go play­ers gen­er­ally aren’t in the mar­ket to stock up on print­er ink. 

It got me thinking.

I checked the office supplier’s web­site, which wasn’t optim­ised for mobile. The web­site couldn’t tell me wheth­er or not they had cer­tain products in stock or not. Wouldn’t their mar­ket­ing efforts have been bet­ter spent jack­ing up their site? 

Let’s ima­gine that the web­site has 500 unique hits every day. What if the office sup­pli­er had aimed their “cre­at­ive ambi­tions” at those 500 daily web vis­it­ors — instead of try­ing to con­vert two young Pokémon Go players?

The FOMO Filter 

A part of me cel­eb­rates the office sup­pli­er for tak­ing a chance to try some­thing new. “Fortune favours the bold,” and so on.

Still, some­thing must be said about tak­ing unne­ces­sary gambles when there’s plenty of oth­er low-hanging fruit. Marketing and com­mu­nic­a­tions are fiercely com­pet­it­ive simply because we com­pete for one of the world’s rare and most valu­able nat­ur­al resources; people’s attention. 

How to keep up with online trends - Marketoonist
By Marketoonist.

The ques­tion we should be ask­ing ourselves:

The FOMO fil­ter: Before exper­i­ment­ing with excit­ing online trends, ask your­self: have you exhausted all exist­ing PR- and mar­ket­ing opportunities?

Stay Focused, Stay Sharp

Businesses can’t afford to jump on every online band­wag­on (Clubhouse, any­one? Or per­haps — the Metaverse?) that seems to be in vogue. 

It turns us into FOMO-suf­fer­ing neo­phili­acs. We fall prey to our strategies of man­u­fac­tur­ing arti­fi­cial scarcity.

The office sup­ply store’s mar­ket­ing team should be excited about inbound mar­ket­ing, Google AdWords, cus­tom­er loy­alty, mar­ket research, online con­ver­sion, search engine optim­isa­tion, and e‑commerce — instead of Pokémon Go.

So, Anne and every­one else strug­gling to keep up, you don’t have to catch them all! 

Just. Stay. Business. Relevant.

Please sup­port my blog by shar­ing it with oth­er PR- and com­mu­nic­a­tion pro­fes­sion­als. For ques­tions or PR sup­port, con­tact me via jerry@​spinfactory.​com.

Update: Since someone asked:

Pokemon Go - DoctorSpinPR - Sirfetchd
Team Instinct, baby.

PR Resource: The Anatomy of Attention

The Anatomy of Attention

Attention is an essen­tial com­pon­ent of pub­lic relations:

  • An organ­isa­tion, starved of atten­tion, trust, and loy­alty, is com­pelled to wage a per­petu­al struggle for its con­tin­ued existence.

We all seem to crave atten­tion in some form or another:

“People want to be loved; fail­ing that admired; fail­ing that feared; fail­ing that hated and des­pised. They want to evoke some sort of sen­ti­ment. The soul shud­ders before obli­vi­on and seeks con­nec­tion at any price.”
— Hjalmar Söderberg (1869−1941), Swedish author

But what con­sti­tutes ‘atten­tion’?

“Attention is a com­plex, real neur­al archi­tec­ture (‘RNA’) mod­el that integ­rates vari­ous cog­nit­ive mod­els and brain cen­ters to per­form tasks like visu­al search.”
Source: Trends in cog­nit­ive sci­ences 5Shipp, S. (2004). The brain cir­cuitry of atten­tion. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 223 – 230. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​0​1​6​/​j​.​t​i​c​s​.​2​0​0​4​.​0​3​.​004

Each of the below terms refers to a spe­cif­ic aspect or type of atten­tion (“men­tal band­width”), a com­plex cog­nit­ive pro­cess. 6Schweizer, K., Moosbrugger, H., & Goldhammer, F. (2005). The struc­ture of the rela­tion­ship between atten­tion and intel­li­gence. Intelligence, 33(6), 589 – 611. … Continue read­ing

Let’s explore dif­fer­ent types of attention:

  • Alertness. This is the state of being watch­ful and ready to respond. It’s the most basic form of atten­tion, rep­res­ent­ing our read­i­ness to per­ceive and pro­cess inform­a­tion from the environment.
  • Sustained atten­tion. This involves focus­ing on a spe­cif­ic task or stim­u­lus over a pro­longed peri­od. It’s cru­cial for tasks that require ongo­ing con­cen­tra­tion, like read­ing or driving.
  • Focused atten­tion. This refers to the abil­ity to con­cen­trate on one par­tic­u­lar stim­u­lus or task while ignor­ing oth­ers. It’s the abil­ity to focus nar­rowly on a single thing.
  • Attentional switch­ing. Also known as task switch­ing or cog­nit­ive flex­ib­il­ity, this involves shift­ing focus from one task to anoth­er. It’s crit­ic­al for mul­ti­task­ing and adapt­ing to chan­ging demands or priorities.
  • Divided atten­tion. This is the abil­ity to pro­cess two or more responses or react to mul­tiple tasks sim­ul­tan­eously. It’s often tested by ask­ing people to per­form two tasks sim­ul­tan­eously, like listen­ing to a con­ver­sa­tion while writ­ing.
  • Attention accord­ing to the super­vis­ory atten­tion­al sys­tem. This concept, derived from cog­nit­ive psy­cho­logy, refers to a high­er-level con­trol sys­tem that reg­u­lates the alloc­a­tion of atten­tion, par­tic­u­larly in situ­ations requir­ing plan­ning or decision-making.
  • Attention as inhib­i­tion. This aspect of atten­tion involves sup­press­ing irrel­ev­ant or dis­tract­ing stim­uli. It’s a cru­cial com­pon­ent of focused atten­tion and self-regulation.
  • Spatial atten­tion. This type of atten­tion focuses on a spe­cif­ic area with­in the visu­al field. It’s like a spot­light that enhances inform­a­tion pro­cessing in a par­tic­u­lar location.
  • Attention as plan­ning. This per­spect­ive views atten­tion as a resource that needs to be alloc­ated effi­ciently, espe­cially in com­plex tasks requir­ing stra­tegic plan­ning and organization.
  • Interference. In the con­text of atten­tion, inter­fer­ence refers to the pro­cess by which irrel­ev­ant inform­a­tion or dis­trac­tions impede the effi­ciency of cog­nit­ive processing.
  • Attention as arous­al. This con­siders atten­tion in the con­text of the gen­er­al level of alert­ness or arous­al. It’s about the read­i­ness of the brain to engage with stim­uli or tasks.
  • Attention accord­ing to the assess­ment tra­di­tion. This refers to meas­ur­ing and eval­u­at­ing atten­tion­al pro­cesses, often in clin­ic­al or edu­ca­tion­al set­tings, to identi­fy atten­tion defi­cits or disorders.

Each type of atten­tion plays a cru­cial role in how we inter­act with and pro­cess inform­a­tion from our envir­on­ment, and under­stand­ing these dif­fer­ent aspects is key in fields like psy­cho­logy, neur­os­cience, and education.

“There’s only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
— Oscar Wilde

Learn more: The Anatomy of Attention

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ANNOTATIONS
ANNOTATIONS
1 Worchel, S., Lee, J., & Adewole, A. (1975). Effects of sup­ply and demand on rat­ings of object value. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32(5), 906 – 914.
2 The beha­viour is some­times called FOMO (fear of miss­ing out).
3 A Pokestop is a vir­tu­al in-game fea­ture of the pop­u­lar mobile game Pokémon Go, a game that blends with real-world locations.
4 Again, for those not up to speed with all things Niantic, a lure is a vir­tu­al item and part of the game. By pla­cing your lure at a Pokestop, you attract vir­tu­al creatures for oth­er play­ers to catch. But I assure you that most busi­nesses can thrive without this spe­cif­ic knowledge.
5 Shipp, S. (2004). The brain cir­cuitry of atten­tion. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 223 – 230. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​0​1​6​/​j​.​t​i​c​s​.​2​0​0​4​.​0​3​.​004
6 Schweizer, K., Moosbrugger, H., & Goldhammer, F. (2005). The struc­ture of the rela­tion­ship between atten­tion and intel­li­gence. Intelligence, 33(6), 589 – 611. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​0​1​6​/​j​.​i​n​t​e​l​l​.​2​0​0​5​.​0​7​.​001
Jerry Silfwer
Jerry Silfwerhttps://doctorspin.net/
Jerry Silfwer, alias Doctor Spin, is an awarded senior adviser specialising in public relations and digital strategy. Currently CEO at KIX Index and Spin Factory. Before that, he worked at Kaufmann, Whispr Group, Springtime PR, and Spotlight PR. Based in Stockholm, Sweden.

The Cover Photo

The cover photo has nothing to do with public relations, of course. I share for no other reason that I happen to enjoy photography. Call it an “ornamental distraction”—and a subtle reminder to appreciate nature.

The cover photo has

This is a picture of a window in Old Town, Stockholm.

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