Olivia: Last year, advertisers spent billions on digital ads. Here's the kicker: The Interactive Advertising Bureau says over a third of all web traffic is fake—bots 'watching' ads meant for you. Your attention is so valuable, companies are now paying software to pretend to be you. Jackson: That's insane. It's like a shadow economy for eyeballs, where robots are the target audience. It feels like the whole system is built on a house of cards. Olivia: It's the central problem Faris Yakob tackles in his book, Paid Attention: Innovative advertising for a digital world. And Yakob is the perfect person to write this—he was a chief technology strategist at a massive agency, McCann Erickson, before starting his own consultancy called, get this, 'Genius Steals'. Jackson: 'Genius Steals.' I love that. It already tells you he's not playing by the old rules. So, this book is basically an autopsy report on the traditional ad industry? Olivia: You could see it that way. But it's also a blueprint for what comes next. He argues that the entire model of advertising we grew up with—interrupting people to get their attention—is fundamentally broken. Jackson: I think my DVR's fast-forward button and my ad-blocker software would agree with him. So if so much of it is fake or skipped, why is everyone still pouring money into this broken system?

Olivia: Because that system, what Yakob calls the 'media industrial complex,' has been the default for a century. He tells this fantastic story about the birth of commercial radio. It wasn't started by passionate artists wanting to broadcast great content. One of the first stations, KWTO, was literally started by a tire dealer in his store to attract customers when the shop was quiet. Jackson: Wait, a tire shop? So the first radio shows were just... background noise to sell tires? Olivia: Exactly. The content was secondary. The primary business model was to aggregate human attention—to get a bunch of people listening—and then sell that block of attention to advertisers. Television perfected this. The shows were the bait, and our attention was the product being sold. Jackson: That makes so much sense. The shows were never really for us; they were just a delivery mechanism for the ads. And I guess that old AIDA model—Attention, Interest, Desire, Action—was the instruction manual for it all. Olivia: Precisely. But that manual is now obsolete. The problem is the shift from scarcity to abundance. In the 1960s, you had three TV channels. If you wanted entertainment, you had to sit through the ads. Today, you have infinite channels, infinite websites, infinite podcasts. Content is no longer scarce, but our attention is. Jackson: And that's the 'attention economy'. Our focus is the finite resource everyone is fighting for. Olivia: Yes. The great psychologist William James defined attention as 'the taking possession by the mind... of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought.' It implies withdrawal from some things to deal effectively with others. You can't pay attention to everything. Jackson: Huh. So when we're scrolling, we're making hundreds of tiny economic decisions a minute about what's worth our cognitive currency. Olivia: And you can't force someone to make that transaction. The pickpocket and magician Apollo Robbins has a great metaphor for it, which Yakob loves. He says, 'Attention is like water. It flows. It’s liquid. You create channels to divert it, and you hope that it flows the right way.' You can't just dam it up and demand it. Jackson: Okay, so if you can't interrupt people and force their attention anymore, what's the alternative? How do you get that water to flow your way?

Olivia: This is where the book gets really profound. Yakob's answer is that you have to become something people want to pay attention to. You have to create meaning. He argues that the most powerful brands today function as modern myths. Jackson: Modern myths? Like... Zeus and Hercules, but for sneakers and search engines? That sounds a bit dramatic. Olivia: It is, but think about it. In a world that's increasingly secular and scientific, he argues that brands have stepped in to fill the void that traditional myths once occupied. They provide us with 'ideas to live by.' They help us define who we are. Jackson: Give me an example. How does a shoe company become a myth? Olivia: Nike. Nike doesn't sell shoes. They sell the idea of 'Just Do It.' They sell the myth of personal triumph, of overcoming limits, of the inner athlete. When someone gets a Nike swoosh tattooed on them—and this is a real story in the book—they're not branding themselves with a shoe company. They're permanently etching a philosophy onto their skin. Jackson: Right, it’s an identity. It's like a sports team. You don't just support the players on the field; you're part of a story, a tribe, a history of struggle and glory. Olivia: Exactly! And Yakob breaks this down into what he calls 'brandemes'—like genes, but for brands. These are the little, irreducible pieces of the myth. For Nike, it's the swoosh, the slogan, the sponsorship of heroic athletes, the ads that feel like mini-movies. All these brandemes work together to build the larger myth. The product is almost a souvenir of that myth. Jackson: But wait, the book mentions that Microsoft's Bing search engine actually outperformed Google in blind comparison tests. People chose Bing's results nearly two-to-one. So the product was objectively better! How did Google win if it's all about the 'myth'? Olivia: That's the perfect illustration of the point! Google's myth was stronger. Their story, their 'brandemes,' were more powerful. They had the 'Don't be evil' mantra, the minimalist homepage that felt clean and academic, the origin story of two Stanford PhDs. They built a myth of being smarter, more benevolent, and more trustworthy. Jackson: So even when the product was technically inferior in a blind test, people stuck with Google because they believed in the Google idea more than the Bing search results. Olivia: Precisely. The brand isn't the product on the shelf. As Yakob puts it, a brand is a 'collective perception in the minds of consumers.' It's a socially constructed idea that's more powerful than facts and figures. Jackson: I get it. Build a myth, don't just sell a product. But that sounds incredibly hard. How do you even begin to create a 'myth'? Where do these big, attention-worthy ideas come from?

Olivia: Well, this brings us to the name of Yakob's own company: 'Genius Steals.' The book's big reveal about creativity is that it's not about divine inspiration or conjuring something from nothing. As he says, 'ideas are new combinations of existing elements.' Jackson: So, creativity is more like being a chef than a magician. You're not creating ingredients out of thin air; you're just combining them in a new way. Olivia: A perfect analogy. And the best creators are masters of what he calls 'recombinant culture.' They import ideas from one field and apply them to another. He uses the artist Banksy as a prime example. Banksy takes iconic, classical art and remixes it with street-art commentary. He puts a caveman pushing a shopping cart in the British Museum. It's a new idea, but it's made from two old ones: cave paintings and consumerism. Jackson: That makes creativity feel much more accessible. It’s a skill, not a superpower. But how do you get good at it? Olivia: The book outlines a practical process. It starts with defining the problem in a way that allows for a creative solution. He tells a great story about Toyota. Executives asked their teams to brainstorm 'ways to increase productivity,' and they got nothing. The question was sterile. Jackson: I can see why. It sounds like corporate homework. Olivia: Right. So the executive reframed the problem. He asked, 'How can we make your jobs easier?' And suddenly, ideas flooded in. The new framing was human, relatable, and inspiring. The way you ask the question determines the kind of answers you'll get. Jackson: Okay, so you define the problem well. What's next? This 'recombination' part still sounds a bit abstract. Olivia: The next step is to gather your ingredients. You look for inspiration from other fields—art, science, history. Then you actively try to combine them. One technique is to use random inputs. You take your problem—say, 'sell more mayonnaise'—and you combine it with a random word, like 'museum.' Jackson: Mayonnaise... museum? Okay, my brain is short-circuiting. What could you possibly do with that? Olivia: Maybe you create a 'Museum of Sandwiches' pop-up. Or you create artisanal mayonnaise jars that look like ancient artifacts. Or you run a campaign where you 'preserve' classic recipes with mayonnaise. The point isn't that every idea is a winner. The point is to force your brain to make new connections. You break out of your usual thought patterns. Jackson: I see. You're deliberately creating tension between two unrelated things to see what spark it creates. It's a structured way to have happy accidents. Olivia: Exactly. The whole process is about being intentional. Define the problem, gather diverse inspiration, force new combinations, and then—this is a key step—incubate. Walk away. Take a shower. Let your subconscious do the work. The 'eureka' moment often comes when you stop trying so hard.

Jackson: It feels like the entire advertising game has shifted. It's moved from a brute-force attack on our senses to a much more sophisticated, almost psychological art of creating meaning. It's not about being the loudest voice in the room anymore, but the most resonant one. Olivia: Exactly. And that resonance isn't just a nice-to-have feeling; it has real-world value. The book argues that advertising's future isn't in 'making ads,' but in 'solving business problems creatively.' And you do that by creating tools, services, and myths that people choose to pay attention to. The WWF campaign with the unprintable file format is a perfect example. They didn't make an ad saying 'save paper'; they made a tool that did it. Jackson: They behaved in a way that was worth talking about. Olivia: That's the ultimate takeaway. In a world of infinite content, the most powerful thing a brand can do is to act. To do something useful, entertaining, or beautiful. The communication then becomes telling the story of what you did. The ad is the echo, not the initial bang. Jackson: It makes you look at the brands you love differently. You start to see the myths they're selling. What's a brand you feel has a 'myth' you buy into? We're always curious to hear what resonates with our community, so let us know your thoughts. Olivia: It’s a great question to reflect on. And a great place to end. Jackson: This is Aibrary, signing off.