What’s the background?
In 2020 we all lived through one of the biggest events of our generation: the COVID-19 pandemic. Working from home and hybrid working became the norm during multiple government-mandated lockdowns, and as a society we developed a different relationship with media. Our favourite programmes, conversations, music – all types of content really – had to fit into the new rhythms of our days. The Storythings team knew audience behaviour had changed, based on anecdotes from our friends and colleagues in the industry – but we wanted to know if our hunches were right. We needed the data! So we decided to do what we do best.
What did we do?
Over 6 months and a range of activities including desk research, a global survey, focus groups and interviews, we asked people how their attention patterns had changed. The 6 findings we crystallised our research into were released over 6 weeks in a newsletter we launched especially for this, called Attention Matters (after the findings were shared, we’ve continued to keep the newsletter alive discussing other aspects of audience attention in the modern age). We also shared our findings at LiveUnion’s Audiences Unleashed event in 2022, and the SimplyIC conference for internal communicators in 2023, both in London.