Toniq

Once I realized I didn’t have to make small talk, or sound a certain way, or explain my life choices, I was able to let my mind go and really think about why I was there and what I was doing with my life — and the best part is, I didn’t have to explain it to anyone. I could sit by the river in silence, allow nature’s voice to fill the air, and just be present with myself.

I know this isn’t new territory; there are literally hundreds of blogs, articles, white papers that touch on this subject: being dry, having a block of sorts. I myself have personally written a few dozen blogs on the subject of drying up, of writer’s block or creative stutters, so no, dear reader, this is not a new subject, and this won’t be the last time I write about it, sad to say.

Now, I love a good scam. No kidding, I could watch people on the street fall for the shell game or, even worse, get their money taken from them in a game of three-card monte. I have spent my life with circus performers and some really good close-up magicians, so I know how both these tricks work. I am not nimble of finger, so I cannot do these tricks, but I understand the mechanics. And just that understanding allows me to enjoy these two games without thinking I can win or make some serious money.

Your brand has words. These words show up in style guides, urban guides, website copy, emails, and all other materials that are connected with your brand. If you’re smart, you’ve hired a copywriter, a pro who makes their bones on understanding words and putting them in an order that will sell your product, highlight your service, or just turn people on to your message.

Much like reading your horoscope and thinking that 680 million people will be experiencing the same thing you’re experiencing just because the moon was in Jupiter’s right front pocket at your birth and believing it, thinking that your team can plan a campaign that ensnares 680 million folks and they will all convert is a little … well … insane.

This isn’t a very upbeat topic, but it can be an enlightening one. If brands are people, then what would your brand’s last meal be? Not an easy question, is it? What does this final meal say about your brand? Who would think, yes, that meal is on brand?

The AI website never had a room. It had a prompt. It looked like a website the way a stand-in looks like an actor until you ask it to do something under pressure, and when it didn’t convert, there was nothing to rework, because nothing had been decided on purpose in the first place.

We’ve spent so much of our lives trying to eliminate friction that we’ve forgotten some kinds of friction are productive. The discomfort of not quite understanding something forces us to stay with it. It asks us to turn an idea over, look at it from different angles, wrestle with it until it finally becomes our own.

I was watching where the sea lion was, and now was not when everything went quiet. Then, directly in front of me, not more than an arm’s length away, three humpback whales came to the surface. One followed the other in quick succession. They took a deep breath, hung at the surface for a moment, unafraid of the boats full of gawkers around them, and then slowly, oh so gracefully, they returned to the depths.

Brands swear that they will save you time, give you time, put time back in your pocket, like time is marbles or sand brains or coins. But are we really saving any time, and what are we doing with that time? Where does it go, and how do brands help us make better use of our time?

In the early days of social media, simply being present online set a brand apart. A founder who shared their thinking openly felt authentic. A company that gave customers a glimpse behind the curtain felt refreshingly transparent. The practices we now take for granted were once genuine differentiators.

For most of the last decade, the dominant story about customer experience has been a story about friction. Friction was the enemy. Long hold times, repetitive forms, sluggish processes, and the indignity of being passed from one department to another. The promise of automation, and then AI, was that friction could be engineered out of the system.

Everyone comes into contact with a brand. There are 500,000+ major consumer brands and tens of millions of registered trademarks worldwide; we all interact with brands at some point. There are few things more ubiquitous than a brand. With all that presence and power, what are brands doing in this time of fear?

The kind move and the strategic move are not the same move, and most of the time, they’re opposites. The kind move tells a brand what it wants to hear in the room, but the strategic move tells a brand the thing it has been hiding from.

Somewhere along the way, marketing teams started doing the same thing. They confused cultural participation with strategic positioning. The confusion is understandable. The dashboards reward it. A trend post outperforms a brand post most weeks of the year, and the team that posts the trend looks responsive, current, and alive. The team that doesn’t look like it missed something.