We’re an ADD society. Our demand for speed is matched only by our exorbitant expectations. We don’t willingly waste a single nano-second of our precious time and we don’t tolerate marketers that can’t anticipate and service our needs flawlessly.

We’re a direct world. There’s no more excuse for a lack of intimacy. Information is everywhere. We are cookied and data mined within an inch of our existence. If the airlines can’t handle my seat preferences, that’s their problem. I’ve given them all the data they need.

Landing pages are the new websites. Who cares what your homepage looks like when your site is located via search most of the time? If you haven’t matched every key word to a specific, customized landing page, you’ve lost the sale.

It’s time to think about your offerings - product, service or marketing - in these terms. We’re moving too fast for words - packages need to read visually, viscerally. We’re too busy for mass marketing. Talk to us individually, uniquely, personally. If you can’t invest the time to know me as a customer, why should I invest my money to get to know you?

Companies need to anticipate, personalize, and serve. That’s today’s measure of a brand. Proactivity, personalization and service are the key success criteria in today’s ADD, hyper-demanding world.

If someone asks you for the time, where do you look?

More and more these days, people are rejecting watches. As far as I can tell, there are at least three reasons why.

1. As a statement about our culture’s obsession with time. Giving up the watch means giving up clock-watching. Instead of multi-tasking to do more faster, some are choosing to do one thing well, without regard to the time it takes. They choose focus. It’s part of the trend away from technology, a desire to return to a simpler time.

2. As a statement about materialism. Watches are more closely associated with status than function. Giving up the watch means taking a stand against superfluous form over the quality of function. It says “I’m confident about who I am and don’t need any status symbols to speak for me”. It’s part of the anti-consumerism trend.

3. Watches have become unnecessary. There are so many other ways to tell time these days - the cell phone, the blackberry, the computer - why bother wearing a watch? It’s an outdated technology.

Interesting, isn’t it? When there’s no more functional need, products and brands must be positioned entirely on the emotional jobs they can fulfill. Watch as badge. Watch as jewelry. Watch as reward. And when the emotional job doesn’t resonate, the entire product category is rejected.

If the humble watch can become the accidental victim of the technology explosion, what other categories are in danger of becoming functionally obsolete from the margins? Is yours?

Do you still wear a watch? Tell us why…