Why am I passionate about this?

I spent my career working with attention, in advertising agencies in London, Sydney, and New York before starting my own creative consultancy in 2013. We consult with brands, agencies, and media companies all over the world and so have an unusually broad purview of the attention-industrial complex. I have a master’s degree from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, in English Literature and Critical Theory, and won the President’s Prize for my thesis on the future of advertising for the Institute of Practitioner’s of Advertising (IPA) Excellence Diploma. I speak on stages at events all over the world, where I’m extremely conscious of the need to hold the audience’s attention.


I wrote

Paid Attention: Innovative Advertising for a Digital World

By Faris Yakob,

Book cover of Paid Attention: Innovative Advertising for a Digital World

What is my book about?

Navigate the cluttered advertising attention marketplace with this bestselling guide to contemporary advertising ideas and models for marketing innovation.

Paid…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Ways of Seeing

Faris Yakob Why did I love this book?

“The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.” Ways Of Seeing is an absolutely seminal required read for anyone living today, immersed in a culture made of media. It was published in 1972, appropriately based on a television series since it is about how different forms of representation - and how we look at them - impacts how we think and how culture operates. Whilst it draws on critical theory it was written to be approachable and indeed went on to influence a whole new era in thinking about images in culture, power dynamics, and the male gaze. My mate Paul lent me his copy years ago and I never gave it back. Thanks Paul, and sorry.

By John Berger,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked Ways of Seeing as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.""But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but word can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled."John Berger's "Ways of Seeing" is one of the most stimulating and the most influential books on art in any language. First published in 1972, it was based on the BBC television series about…


Book cover of XX

Faris Yakob Why did I love this book?

This was my favorite book from the last year. It’s breathtaking in its ambition, narratively, conceptually, and in media terms. The author has a sideline as a very respected graphic designer and various parts of the book collapse form and function, turning words into graphic art into literature. At the heart, it’s a science fiction novel of ideas, a story about stories and how they create the world. Ideas can be helpful or harmful but the only thing that makes them successful is how well they continue to replicate. This is one of my favorite kinds of novel, crafting philosophy from a truly imaginative story that rolls along like a thriller.

By Rian Hughes,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked XX as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A boundary pushing, extremely inventive sci-? epic of ?rst contact by world-renowned graphic designer and comics creator Rian Hughes

When a signal of extraterrestrial origin is intercepted by one of Earth s most powerful radio satellites, people worldwide, including a small team of tech outsiders at a software engineering ?rm specializing in arti?cial intelligence, race to interpret the message carried by what could be the ?rst communication from an intergalactic civilization. Has humanity made ?rst contact? Is the signal itself an alien life-form? A threat? If so, how will the people of Earth respond?

Supplemented by redacted NASA reports, magazine…


Book cover of The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads

Faris Yakob Why did I love this book?

A companion piece to my book, I flatter myself to think. Tim Wu charts the rise of the attention economy to its current place at the heart of modern capitalism. Attention merchants - industrial-scale harvesters of human attention - have invaded every tiny moment of the day in order to sell that attention and data to advertisers. As more and more of our day has been consumed by media consumption, culture and politics have adapted as the arms race for attention escalates. Both broad and deep, it looks at our attention-seeking culture from the removal of an academic and considers the impact on society and culture when the very stuff of human experience is considered a commodity.

By Tim Wu,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked The Attention Merchants as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Attention merchant: an industrial-scale harvester of human attention. A firm whose business model is the mass capture of attention for resale to advertisers.
In nearly every moment of our waking lives, we face a barrage of advertising enticements, branding efforts, sponsored social media, commercials and other efforts to harvest our attention. Over the last century, few times or spaces have remained uncultivated by the 'attention merchants', contributing to the distracted, unfocused tenor of our times. Tim Wu argues that this is not simply the byproduct of recent inventions but the end result of more than a century's growth and expansion…


Book cover of How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

Faris Yakob Why did I love this book?

Our attention is a precious - and overdrawn - resource. This counterpoint to the appeal of attention economics helped me think about how to allocate my attention with intention. Partly self-help guide, part political manifesto, Jenny rails against the hustle culture of modern capitalism and provides a way of thinking beyond productivity, efficiency, and the supremacy of technology. As advertisers and media companies continue to find new and better ways to harvest attention it behooves us to consider what we want to do ours, and remind corporations that it is a rare and valuable thing. What you pay attention to is ultimately what your life will be.

By Jenny Odell,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked How to Do Nothing as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

** A New York Times Bestseller **

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY: Time • The New Yorker • NPR • GQ • Elle • Vulture • Fortune • Boing Boing • The Irish Times • The New York Public Library • The Brooklyn Public Library

"A complex, smart and ambitious book that at first reads like a self-help manual, then blossoms into a wide-ranging political manifesto."—Jonah Engel Bromwich, The New York Times Book Review

One of President Barack Obama's "Favorite Books of 2019"
Porchlight's Personal Development & Human Behavior Book of the Year

In a…


Book cover of Murder Must Advertise

Faris Yakob Why did I love this book?

In this delightful romp of a murder mystery, Lord Peter Wimsey must pose as a new copywriter at a storied, and very posh, advertising agency in London to solve a murder and drug smuggling ring and gets into all kinds of hijinks. It’s a lovely period piece, full of the class boundaries of the English of the era, it's a cross between Agatha Christie and P.G. Wodehouse. The descriptions and observations of an agency decades before television, staffed entirely by posh men and the tension between departments and clients are depressingly familiar and hilarious at the same time. It’s a minutely well-observed and very entertaining look at the inside of the industry that only exists to attract and leverage your attention.

By Dorothy L. Sayers,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Murder Must Advertise as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'Think MadMen in prewar London' The Guardian

The tenth book in Dorothy L Sayers' classic Lord Peter Wimsey series, introduced by bestselling crime writer Peter Robinson - a must-read for fans of Agatha Christie's Poirot and Margery Allingham's Campion Mysteries.

Victor Dean fell to his death on the stairs of Pym's Advertising Agency, but no one seems to be sorry. Until an inquisitive new copywriter joins the firm and asks some awkward questions...

Disguised as his disreputable cousin Death Bredon, Lord Peter Wimsey takes a job - one that soon draws him into a vicious network of blackmailers and drug…


Explore my book 😀

Paid Attention: Innovative Advertising for a Digital World

By Faris Yakob,

Book cover of Paid Attention: Innovative Advertising for a Digital World

What is my book about?

Navigate the cluttered advertising attention marketplace with this bestselling guide to contemporary advertising ideas and models for marketing innovation.

Paid Attention delivers new and innovative insights into advertising ideas: what they are, why they are evolving, and how to use them in day-to-day strategy within a changing digital landscape. This second edition includes two new chapters exploring the latest evidence about attention spans and trends in online advertising, as well as new case studies on compelling brand ideas. In a world where being a consumer is confusing, learn to take control of the situation and make yourself heard in today's crowded attention marketplace.

Book cover of Ways of Seeing
Book cover of XX
Book cover of The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads

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No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

By Rona Simmons,

Book cover of No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

Rona Simmons Author Of No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

I come by my interest in history and the years before, during, and after the Second World War honestly. For one thing, both my father and my father-in-law served as pilots in the war, my father a P-38 pilot in North Africa and my father-in-law a B-17 bomber pilot in England. Their histories connect me with a period I think we can still almost reach with our fingertips and one that has had a momentous impact on our lives today. I have taken that interest and passion to discover and write true life stories of the war—focusing on the untold and unheard stories often of the “Average Joe.”

Rona's book list on World War II featuring the average Joe

What is my book about?

October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on any other single day of the war.

The narrative of No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident while focusing its attention on ordinary individuals—clerks, radio operators, cooks, sailors, machinist mates, riflemen, and pilots and their air crews. All were men who chose to serve their country and soon found themselves in a terrifying and otherworldly place.

No Average Day reveals the vastness of the war as it reaches past the beaches in…

No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

By Rona Simmons,

What is this book about?

October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, or on June 6, 1944, when the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy, or on any other single day of the war. In its telling of the events of October 24, No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident. The book begins with Army Private First-Class Paul Miller's pre-dawn demise in the Sendai #6B Japanese prisoner of war camp. It concludes with the death…


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