Simon Dumenco, Vampire Weekend, well said….

Just a brief note here as I had a chance to catch up on some AdvertisingAge (www.adage.com) reading this past weekend.

Simon Dumenco’s media rant on Vampire Weekend was to the point and….poignant.

I want to extend a sentence couple that Dumenco put together while castigating critic Bob Lefsetz. That statement was: “Cool is not so important anymore. Attention is king.”

Much have been made about “engagement metrics” and “the attention economy.” To reference Dumenco’s comments, “attention is king.” I’m going to flatten that out a bit and bring it back to the definion of “media.”

Media, according to James Currier formerly of eMode/Tickle, is about “my relationship to the world around me.” It’s about relating to people through the media or content that I select for myself as “cool” or “me.”

To bring this back to Dumenco, I concure with “what” he is saying, but his prose selection needs improvement.

Maybe it reads better as “Cool, as definened by the masses, is not important at all anymore. Attention is king.” When you view “attention” in real metrics, like unique users, visits, etc. it’s really linking together all the data around media and content. It’s quantifying it, so, in my mind, “attention” is measureable and merely a quantifiable calculation of  ”cool.”

What one music critic believes is horrid (read Dumenco’s piece) is not important unless his influence governs action or in the case a calculation of everyone that interacts with his media (his critique) and then takes an action versus it.

I’ll edit this later when I’ve ruminated more on the post.