A missed quota, a driver cutting us off on the freeway and a poorly designed website interface all rise to the top of our attention stack because we have to struggle to respond to them and or at some level figurative or literal could take us out.
Threats, irritants and the things that slow us down and introduce friction capture and consume our attention and occupy the limited ability we have to focus.
This is true for people, companies, organizations and countries.
We pay attention to these things because we have to to get through them for our own good reasons.
One strategy to attract, win-over and keep customers is to tap into solving the existing demands on their attention instead of trying to "create demand".
Going to where the attention is focused is a lot easier than clamoring louder for a limited resource.