For decades, business strategists swore by Michael Porter’s Five Forces framework to map the competitive landscape. It was clean. Elegant. Tidy. You had your direct competitors, the threat of substitutes, bargaining power of buyers and suppliers, and barriers to entry. Boardrooms everywhere could point to their industry map and predict where disruption might emerge.

That era is over.

Not because Porter was wrong — but because the game has fundamentally changed.

Today, you’re not just competing against your direct competitor’s price point or your industry’s usual suspects. You’re not even sparring with substitutes in the classical sense.

You are in an all-out, daily Fight for AIR: Attention, Influence, and Relevance.

In this new reality, even your grandma’s Facebook post about her tomato garden is a competitor. Why? Because it competes for the exact same limited, non-renewable resource as your product, your sales pitch, and your content: human attention.

Let’s unpack this, and reframe Porter’s Five Forces for this brutal new attention economy.

Before we get tactical, let’s anchor in a simple truth:

In a world of abundance, scarcity rules.
And right now, the scarcest commodity isn’t oil, gold, or data.
It’s attention.

Humans can only focus on a finite number of things in a given day. The average person faces thousands of marketing messages daily — and that doesn’t even count personal distractions like texts from friends, viral memes, or random dopamine hits from their feed.

Your battle isn’t just against other products.
It’s against everything — literally everything — vying for a moment of your customer’s focus.

1. The New Rivalry: It’s You vs. Infinite Noise

In the old playbook, this was about the number and strength of your direct competitors.

Today? Every creator, every brand, every pop-up notification is your rival.

Your e-commerce clothing brand isn’t just up against other apparel brands. You’re fighting streaming platforms, viral TikTok dances, YouTube rabbit holes, even headlines about celebrity breakups. All of it swarms your customer’s finite attention span.

This means differentiation isn’t optional — it’s existential. But it’s not enough to merely have a better product or service. You must consistently win the battle to stay in view and stay relevant amidst an infinite content blizzard.

Tactical takeaway: Your competition is the totality of noise in your customer’s life. You win by rising above it with undeniable clarity and relevance.

2. Substitutes? Try Better Distractions

Substitutes used to mean alternatives that solved the same problem differently. Taxi cabs vs. ride-sharing apps. Cable TV vs. Netflix.

Now, a “substitute” is anything that hijacks the brain’s reward system more effectively than your message. Your beautifully crafted marketing campaign might lose to a trending meme, a cute dog video, or an unexpected notification from a dating app.

Your customer’s brain doesn’t care if it’s “relevant” in the traditional sense. It only cares about what feels rewarding in the moment.

Tactical takeaway: Map not just your direct substitutes, but your audience’s daily dopamine loop. Study what steals their time and build hooks to ethically compete.

3. Bargaining Power of Buyers? Your Buyers Hold the Power of the Scroll

Once, buyers flexed their power through price sensitivity and comparison shopping. Now, they exert power by swiping, scrolling, or ignoring you entirely.

Your audience doesn’t have to negotiate. They just move on.
No protest. No polite “no thank you.”
Just thumbs flicking upward to the next micro-entertainment.

This is ruthless but freeing. It means you can stop obsessing over price wars and start obsessing over value-per-second in your messaging.

Tactical takeaway: Craft irresistible, thumb-stopping moments in the first seconds. Earn the next click, then the next. Attention is rented in micro-payments of time.

4. Bargaining Power of Suppliers → Gatekeepers of the Feed, Platforms Are the New Power Brokers

In the old days, suppliers controlled your raw materials or distribution access. Today, your suppliers are the platforms and algorithms that control access to audience attention.

Meta, Google, TikTok, LinkedIn — they are your new suppliers.
They control the feed. They set the tolls. They reward content that serves their interests (more engagement, more ad revenue for them).

Understand: you are playing in their sandbox.
And they can change the rules at any time.

Tactical takeaway: Master platform mechanics, but never build your empire on rented land. Build owned media and direct relationships (email lists, communities) to reduce dependency on algorithmic suppliers.

5. Threat of New Entrants → The Floodgates Are Wide Open For Content

Historically, industries were protected by high barriers to entry: patents, distribution networks, capital requirements.

Now? All you need is a smartphone and an idea.

Anyone, anywhere, can become a competitor for attention. A 13-year-old with a viral video can out-engage Fortune 500 brands overnight. The gates are gone. The flood is constant.

This democratization of reach means you cannot rest on incumbency. Loyalty is fragile, and attention is mercenary.

Tactical takeaway: Act like a challenger, always. Relentlessly innovate your content, your delivery, and your engagement. Complacency is death.

Attention → Influence → Relevance

If Porter’s Five Forces describe your external battlefield, the Fight for AIR describes your internal playbook for winning it.

The sequence matters:

1. Attention is the gateway.
2. Influence is the persuasion layer.
3. Relevance is the stickiness that keeps you in the game.

Without attention, nothing happens.
Without influence, attention is wasted.
Without relevance, influence decays.

Think of AIR as the oxygen supply to your brand’s fire. Without it, you suffocate.

Let’s land the plane with actionable steps:

1. Design for Scroll-Stop: Every post, ad, or email must grab attention in the first two seconds. Use contrast, curiosity, and bold framing

2. Create Velocity Loops: Make your content easy to share, easy to remix, and easy to spread. Speed compounds relevance. 

3. Own Your Channels: Prioritize building owned media (email lists, text lists, communities) where you control access to attention. 

4. Understand Attention Cycles: Know when your audience is most engaged, what formats they crave, and what platforms they trust.

5. Be Relentlessly Useful: Deliver disproportionate value. If you solve meaningful problems, you earn not just attention, but permission for repeat attention. 

Porter gave us a durable framework for industrial-era competition. But in the digital era, the Fight for AIR rewrites the rules.

You’re no longer just battling industry competitors.
You’re fighting everything that occupies your customer’s mind.
A trending hashtag. A viral dance. A text from their kid.
Grandma’s tomato garden post.

To survive and thrive, you must relentlessly earn and re-earn attention, build influence, and maintain relevance in an environment of infinite distraction.

The good news?
The playing field is wild, but it’s wide open.
Your agility is your advantage.
And if you commit to mastering the Fight for AIR, you don’t just compete —
You win.