Three things I heard while mowing the lawn

I was mowing the lawn this weekend in high-90s heat, sweating through my shirt and debating whether my Kentucky bluegrass gets one more round of fertilizer or just coasts into summer dormancy. I needed a good podcast for the job, and I ended up with two creators recapping the big global advertising festival, the one where brands and platforms gather to argue about the future of attention.

They weren't talking about nonprofits. They were talking about us anyway. Three things stuck.

Measurement, money, and connection

First: define success on your own terms. They were urging creators not to let sponsors define their scoreboard, and we have the same disease with different vocabulary. When click-through rates and return on ad spend become the whole definition of success, we lose the forest for the trees. The mission has outcomes those dashboards will never show.

Second: the money is moving back toward big swings. Brands are starting to fund bold, expensive ideas again instead of only buying safe reach. Our version of that is leaders willing to green-light meaningful investments in storytelling and trust, the work that won't convert this week but shapes growth for years.

Third, and the one that made me talk out loud to an empty yard: we're moving from the attention economy to the connection economy. Attention is a commodity you can buy by the thousand. Connection is rooted in interaction and authenticity, and you can't buy it at all. You can only build it.

One-time clicks can't sustain growth. Community can.

Which is the whole brand-led argument in festival clothing: stop renting attention and start earning connection, then let your campaigns convert what the connection created. Also, if anyone has strong opinions about late-June fertilizer for cool-season lawns, my inbox is open.