Attention Is Dead. What Comes After It?
Cannes 2025 surfaced a real crisis: if the attention economy is dying, the entire logic of digital advertising — impressions, reach, engagement — needs rethinking. Indian agencies were there for that conversation.
The headline from the Indian contingent at Cannes wasn't a Grand Prix. It was a question: what do you sell when attention is the one thing you can no longer buy?
"Death of the Attention Economy" isn't a provocative panel title — it's a diagnosis. Scroll fatigue is real, ad blindness is measurable, and the platforms that made reach cheap are now charging more for less. The math that justified digital-first brand building a decade ago is broken.
The Cannes-Buri Nazar piece makes the other half of the argument. Indian advertising has always had a parallel track — rooted in superstition, ritual, collective emotion — that operates completely outside the attention-economy logic. Buri nazar as a creative reference isn't nostalgic. It's a reminder that the most durable cultural hooks in this market predate the internet and will outlast the algorithm.
"Tech on the Beach, God in the Basement" captures the same split. The surface conversation in Indian marketing is about tools — AI, programmatic, personalisation at scale. The undercurrent is something older and harder to automate: belief, trust, the feeling that a brand is *ours*.
The agencies and brands that figure out how to hold both will win. The ones that chase the next attention-capture trick are running a race with no finish line.
For Indian creative studios, this is actually an opening. Deep cultural fluency — knowing when Buri nazar lands and when it doesn't — is not something a global network buys off the shelf.