The engagement crisis: why attention is no longer enough and what brands can do to be relevant
In recent years, communication (not only that of brands, but systemic communication) seems to have progressively flattened onto a single imperative: entertain.
It is no longer simply about capturing attention, but about holding it for as long as possible through continuous, often superficial stimulation that reduces complexity to impulse. In this scenario, the content becomes increasingly similar to each other: accelerated, simplified, emotionally polarized. The user is no longer called to interpret, but to react. Scrolls, consumes, forgets.
This dynamic is never neutral. It is the result of a media ecosystem that rewards what is immediately consumable, often penalizing what instead requires time, attention, silence. Even seemingly technical choices, such as the incentive to use music in Instagram posts or the preference for short and rhythmic formats, become proof of this imperative, true cultural devices that guide the way we perceive and produce meaning. The risk, therefore, is evident: a progressive erosion of communicative depth.
From communication to entertainment: a cultural (and anthropological) shift
What we are witnessing is not just a change in formats, but a more radical shift: the transformation of communication into permanent entertainment. An entertainment that, more and more often, takes on a passive form. It does not activate critical thinking, does not generate critical distance, does not build visions. On the contrary, it anesthetizes.
In this drift, the concept of “spectacle” theorized by Guy Debord in The Society of the Spectacle appears today more than ever relevant: a reality in which representation tends to replace direct experience, and in which everything is progressively reduced to a spectacular form.
Even complex, dramatic, even tragic themes are sucked into this flow. The spasmodic race for spectacularization and visibility invades every field, reaching territories that, until recently, were considered untouchable from a symbolic point of view.
It is not purely an ethical issue, rather a cultural threshold that affects the very quality of thought. When everything becomes content, nothing retains a specific weight.
The limits of the “Content Economy”
Digital platforms are not neutral. They guide behaviors, define priorities, influence languages. For brands, passively adhering to this paradigm represents a strategic as well as cultural risk. For them, it often means unconsciously adapting to the mainstream logic of algorithms and big Tech, sacrificing much in terms of complexity, depth, relevance, and identity.
This scenario fits fully into the so-called Content Economy, in which the production of content becomes continuous, industrialized, and performance-oriented, transforming the content itself into a commodity rather than a vector of meaning.
The pursuit of engagement for its own sake produces indistinct, interchangeable communication that is easily replaceable. In an increasingly saturated environment, being visible no longer means being relevant. Visibility without a strong and authentic meaning is a form of mere noise. And noise, in the long run, does not generate value.
Art and culture as a counter-device
This is where an alternative perspective comes into play. Art and culture, applied to corporate communication, are not simply aesthetic tools or original branding operations. They can represent a true counter-device to the dominant paradigm.
Art, by its nature, does not entertain passively. It interrupts, disorients, requires mental and emotional participation. It introduces ambiguity, opens interpretations, slows down the time of enjoyment. Culture builds social contexts, layers meanings, activates thought and memory.
Applied to corporate communication, these dimensions allow brands to move away from the logic of immediate reaction to enter into that of deep relationship. Integrating artistic logics into communication therefore means shifting the focus: from performance to depth, from visibility to meaning, from instant reaction to the experience that settles.
Overcoming the dogma of entertainment does not mean giving up the audience’s attention. It means redefining its quality.
Possible strategies: what brands can concretely do
Overcoming the dogma of entertainment does not mean abandoning communicative effectiveness, but rethinking it in depth. It involves shifting the focus from a purely performative logic, made of metrics, reach, and immediacy, towards a more solid and lasting construction of meaning, relationship, and cultural positioning. In this perspective, some operational trajectories can help brands to exit the standardization of contemporary language and redefine their role in the public space.
1. Restoring value to time and slowness Content that does not end in scrolling, but invites staying, rereading, contemplation.
2. Integrate artistic practices into communication processes Collaborations with artists, creative residencies, visual and narrative research projects that have not only a decorative function, but a generative one.
3. Build layered narratives Go beyond the logic of a single and immediate message to develop complex storytelling, capable of evolving over time.
4. Recover the analog dimension and the offline experience Exit digital platforms to reactivate more direct and situated forms of relationship: events, installations, physical publications, interventions in public space. The analog not as nostalgia, but as a strategic lever to generate memorable, non-replicable experiences that are less subject to algorithmic dynamics.
5. Reactivate the critical thinking of the public Do not treat the audience as a passive consumer, but as an active interlocutor, capable of interpreting, choosing, positioning themselves.
Towards communication that leaves a trace
In an ecosystem dominated by noise, standing out does not mean making more noise. It means changing frequency. Art and culture offer brands the opportunity to exit a commercial competition based solely on attention and to enter a deeper dimension: that of meaning, memory, cultural impact.
Because in the long term, what only entertains passes, while what generates authentic thought, remains.
Media artist active since 2013, with over 80 exhibitions worldwide. His works are part of the catalogue of Heure Exquise!, distributor of the audiovisual collections of the Musée du Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay. He has been selected for major events and exhibitions, including the XVI Videoart Yearbook curated by art critic Renato Barilli, the Collettiva Giovani Artisti (Young Artists Collective) of the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa and The Wrong Biennale, winning numerous awards and recognitions over the years.
His artistic research has also been included in the book “L’arte del XXI secolo. Temi, linguaggi, artisti” (21st Century Art: Themes, Languages, Artists) by Viviana Vannucci, lecturer and international curator.
Alongside his artistic activity, he works as an art director in the field of multimedia communication. Moving between art and communication, he coined the term “Artivator” to define a new role for the artist: cultural activator for brands, territories and realities outside the art system. He is also the author of the literary manifesto of Metaluddismo, published in the aperiodical Il Foglio Clandestino.
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