attention industry

Minimum Effective Dose

The only thing that stuck with me, from the 3/4 of The Four Hour Body that I read (other than the knowledge that beans and lentils are actually kinda awesome) was the concept of the minimum effective dose.

Rather than looking at this as a medical or physical term, I’ve been thinking about it in all aspects of my life. As in: what’s the minimum effective dose for communication between friends to continue feeling connected and close? What’s the minimum effective dose for mainstream media for me to maintain an understanding of popular culture necessary to do my job well? What’s the minimum effective dose of research to ensure that I understand this project or target?

Or: what’s the minimum effective dose of marketing to drive our target to this action?

I find that people in this industry don’t often think about how little they can do, or how little they should do, to get things done. But sometimes a small, insidious impact is more meaningful than a massive, off-putting one. As much as I’m not a huge fan of subtlety as a concept, there’s something to be said for minimalism.

After all, no one attempts to demolish a building by creating a bomb big enough to have it explode - something of massive scale is moved instead by carefully placed charges, in just the right area.

And yet, the average large campaign is based entirely on the opposite principle: doing something engaging and/or clever, and then making it as omnipresent as reality or budget allows.

The benefit of minimum effective dose thinking isn’t just that it inherently saves budget, but that getting it to work requires more integration, not just between elements, but into the existing behaviour patterns of your target. And when you’re trying to have an impact without flooding the system, you generally need more small pieces, not one large attention-grabbing broadcast explosion.