Georgie Lee, PR and Marketing Assistant:

• How brands can adapt to decreasing attention spans
• Micro-influences over celebrities
• The importance of emotive storytelling in 2025

New seasons bring new consumer habits, a significant one being decreasing attention spans. So, to avoid the risk of falling behind, companies should consider giving their communications a spring clean – focusing their communications on cutting through the noise of social media and advertising. Here are three ways that companies can refresh their communications this spring.

Decreasing attention spans

The rise of the Internet, social media and digital devices has negatively affected our ability to focus. Today, individuals scroll fast and tune out even faster. So, brands need to keep this front of mind when developing campaigns that creatively capture and hold attention. 

It can be difficult trying to whittle down your message into something short and snappy, but, when done well it can be extremely impactful. Good examples include Cadbury’s ‘Made to Share’ campaign, the ‘I Am Not A Typo’ campaign, and one of my personal favourites – Burger King’s ‘Mouldy Whopper’ advert.

These examples quickly portray the brand message, grab attention and have a more lasting impact on consumers. Companies that want to engage their audience’s attention quickly should focus on compelling visuals, punchy messaging and snappy captions, to ensure they make the most of their communications this season and beyond.

Micro-influencers over celebrities

For many years, businesses have been collaborating with celebrities and high-end influencers to promote their brands. However, in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis where the cost of food, affordable housing, energy and more are affecting lives, the luxurious lifestyles of celebrities and influencers are becoming less and less relatable to the average person. So, does this mean that celebrity endorsements no longer provide as much value as they did? 

Gen Z in particular places a lot of trust in relatable content from authentic creators, which is where micro-influencers can thrive. In fact, in most cases, brands may find that micro-influencer collabs have a better return on investment.  Although their reach is smaller, micro-influencers have highly engaged audiences and strong, like-minded follower communities. Having said this, authenticity is key, and this is something some brands have had to learn the hard way. For example, who remembers when Poppi sent out vending machines to a number of high-profile influencers, stocked up with their soft drinks for the Superbowl? Although this achieved mass exposure for Poppi, the campaign was criticised for seeming ‘out of touch’ to send excessive gift packages to influencers with little connection to the brand, leaving Poppi’s own loyal customer base feeling overlooked.

Emotive storytelling

Using emotional appeal as part of a communications strategy remains a powerful tool for ensuring people engage with your campaigns. It is scientifically proven that humans process emotions faster than they do rationale, so by generating a strong emotive response, companies can build more meaningful connections with their customers.

The reason this is important, now perhaps more than ever, is that consumers are exposed to tens of thousands of adverts a day. Digitalisation has made it much easier for brands to reach their consumers. Companies should therefore identify the emotional needs of their target audience and structure their communications around them to trigger emotional responses that truly resonate and encourage them to engage with their brand. 

A great example of this is Ryanair’s social media presence, which is rooted in humour. Its sarcastic, meme-filled, reactive content has gained the airline a huge social media following and encourages masses of engagement. Why? Because it has leveraged the use of an emotion that works for its audience.

Whether it be through joy, humour, fear, security, nostalgia or even sadness, emotion is hard-wired into our brains and causes us to make subconscious associations and decisions before we think about them rationally, so brands will continue to benefit from using emotion as a tool to build connections and convert audiences.

In a crowded and fast-evolving digital world, standing out requires far more than just visibility — it demands relevance, relatability, and real connection. By using concise storytelling, leveraging trusted micro-influencers who are representative of their following, and tapping into the power of emotion, brands can create communications that capture attention and resonate with audiences this season.