Toniq

Are brands actually saving us time, giving us time, opening up our time, or are they time bandits, quietly taking away moments that once mattered, moments we’ve now forgotten? Now we have time savers filling our time.

People don’t defend brands because they’re perfect. They defend them because they understand what the brand is trying to do and they agree with it.

That’s where the real question begins. How did these brands win the cultural lottery? What makes Kleenex a default, while other facial tissue brands remain just facial tissue? How did Bubble Wrap achieve immortality when competitors still sit in the corner labeled “protective cushioning” like a kid picked last for dodgeball?

Which brings me to the real question. What do brands owe their customers? What do they really owe them? Not the old line about the customer always being right. What lengths should a brand go to in order to keep people happy? And where’s the point where trying to make everyone happy actually makes things worse?

Brands fall into this same trap. They look at age, location, income, or whatever data point their dashboard spits out, and they build entire campaigns on top of it. They think they understand the person behind the number. Most of the time, they don’t come close.

There’s something inside us that lights up when we hit a moment that refuses to explain itself. It’s like the brain sits up a little straighter. Wait, what was that? What’s going on here? Why is there a penguin in a high school hallway? We lean closer because the story suddenly gives us a job to do. It lets us wonder.

As the industry shifted, the firms that didn’t pay attention to their brand presence didn’t fall behind because the work slipped. The work stayed strong. What slipped was the way they talked about it.

Empathy disappears because no one is really in charge of it. Product thinks marketing has it. Marketing assumes research covered it. Research waits for leadership to set the tone. Leadership assumes everyone already gets it. With no clear owner, empathy becomes vague. Everyone values it, but no one protects it.

Most brands will tell you they serve everyone. They talk about inclusivity. They talk about connection. They talk about meeting people where they are. But behind the scenes, in the quiet rooms where strategy decks live, there is an unspoken truth. Brands draw invisible age lines. They decide who they want and who they do not. They decide which ages feel aspirational and which feel like a liability.

Most of the brands in your life barely register. You buy whatever you buy, it does its job, and that’s the end of it. Nothing memorable. Nothing worth thinking about. And then, once in a while, something lands differently. You come across a book or a logo or a voice at some random moment and, for whatever reason, it sticks with you.

People talk about being present like it’s some mystical thing. It isn’t. It’s a skill you build the same way you build anything else. Repetition. Awareness. Time spent paying attention to the world you’re in instead of the one you wish you were in.

Renaissance Faires are built on a simple truth. People love the idea of transformation without having to go through any of the work that real transformation requires. You put on a costume, grab a turkey leg, talk like you swallowed a Shakespeare dictionary, and for a few hours, you feel transported.

Stoppard was more than just a guy putting words on the page and screen; he wasn't "just a writer." He was someone who trusted language the way some people trust a familiar tool. When you look at his life, you see a man who leaned on words because they made sense to him and helped him make sense of everything else.

The mistake in all this is simple. We treat luxury like a collection of ingredients. Price, materials, square footage, prestige. Mix them in the right order, and you think you’ve created something elevated. But ingredients aren’t the meal. They never have been.

From the outside, it all feels direct and obvious. Inside the work, it is anything but. Simplicity is the last thing that shows up. It comes only after the messy part is over. It is the reward for clarity earned the long way.