I noticed something odd recently.

I was walking back from a client meeting in Covent Garden in London.

A street performer was doing something genuinely impressive. Not gimmicky. Not loud. Proper skill. It made me stop and actually watch. But I was the only one of a few. Most other people slowed down, watched for a few seconds… and then carried on with their day.

About 5 minutes later, I passed a coffee shop and a man who was leaving, misjudged the step onto the pavement and dropped half of the tray of coffees he was carrying. Most splashed on his suit trousers. Repeated swearing ensued. Mild chaos.

I genuinely felt sorry for the guy.

Virtually everyone around the shop then stopped. Someone laughed. A couple of them took their phones out.

Why such a different response?

That’s attention bias at work.

We don’t notice what’s objectively best.

We notice what feels emotionally relevant right now.

And for me, that explains a lot about why marketing engagement feels so hard.

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The real problem isn’t attention spans

A lot of people say that attention spans have dropped. But I’m not sure that’s true. I can’t imagine that people have suddenly lost the ability to focus.

They’re just better at filtering.

Your audience is constantly running quick, subconscious checks:

• Is this relevant to me?
• Do I need this right now?
• How much effort will this take to understand?

If the answer to the last one feels like “a bit too much”, the content doesn’t get rejected. It simply gets skipped.

This is why so much good financial and fintech content quietly disappears.

Too often, it’s asking the brain to work too hard, too early.

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Why finance struggles more than most sectors

Finance doesn’t lack ideas. It lacks immediacy.

Risk, regulation, long-term thinking and nuance all matter. But they don’t naturally scream “pay attention now”. So, marketing teams compensate by adding context, explanation and reassurance.

The result is often content that’s technically correct, but cognitively heavy.

According to Nielsen Norman Group, users typically read only 20–28% of the words on a webpage, scanning for meaning rather than absorbing detail.

In that environment, clarity is the most crucial thing you need because, on first impressions, your prospect isn’t judging your content on quality.

They’re judging it on mental cost.

They’re making high-stakes decisions all day. Budgets. Risk. Growth. Lunch.

So, when your message appears, it gets one quick test:

“Will this drain me, or help me?”

If the answer isn’t immediately obvious, the safest option is to ignore it.

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Why more content rarely fixes the problem

When engagement drops, the instinct is to do more.

More posts.

More formats.

More channels.

But attention doesn’t respond to volume. It responds to ease.

The brands that stand out usually aren’t louder. They’re simpler. They repeat the same core idea across channels, rather than reinventing the message each time.

So, instead of asking:

“How do we make this more exciting?”, try:

“Where are we making people think unnecessarily?”

• Long openings before the point appears.
• Multiple messages competing in one piece of content.
• Ideas that only make sense once you already care.

Each one adds friction. And friction is what quietly kills engagement.

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Final thought

This comes up a lot in my work.

Teams assume engagement problems mean they need more creativity or more spend. In reality, they usually need sharper decisions about what not to say.

When the message is stripped back and shaped properly, engagement tends to improve without theatrics. No hacks or tricks. Just fewer obstacles between the idea and the reader.

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