Why not funny, disarming, surprising, heartfelt, dramatic, quirky, Disruptive™, exhilarating, unexpected, surreal or hilarious? Well, yes, all that too, but not all at once, that’d be a lot. Except Disruptive™. Pretty sure we’d have to pay a licensing fee to a guy at a holding company in New York to use that one.

Interest is the gateway emotion. Nothing can be any of the above without first being interesting. Interesting cracks open the door just a little.

Howard Gossage, the smartest guy who ever worked in advertising, said way back in the 60s something along the lines of, “People pay attention to what interests them and sometimes what interests them is an ad.” It’s still true, but today he’d probably have to include a few more kinds of communications, rather than just, “ad.” But it was the 60s and Mad Men held sway and rye tumblers.

Interesting is the moment at which something ceases to be one of the many other things we see and ignore during a day, and becomes a thing to which we donate a few moments of our time – precious, short-in-supply moments. And now, in the era of social, something that we may chose to share.