Toniq

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.

The point is, does it matter who says it? Does it matter if it’s a world-class mind or the docent at the town toenail museum? Does a scientist saying AI is conscious make it any more real than an average ham-and-egger saying the same thing?

So, my friend’s comment about my muse being out of focus was interesting, and it started me thinking about muses, what is a muse, why is a muse, and, as is always the case, how it connects to my work with ThoughtLab. And this brought up the question: if you’re a brand, do you have a muse?

Storytelling is really big in branding. Everything has a story, an arc, a main character, and on and on. Brands don’t say to customers, “Here’s a story, buy this product or service, or you’ll get your ass kicked.” Why? Two reasons. One, that’s not something you say to a customer. Threatening has never been a good sales technique. Two, because it’s not really a story.

That’s one of the quieter lies addiction tells you. It teaches you to use competence as proof. It tells you that as long as you’re still showing up, still doing the work, still keeping your life moving, then nothing’s really wrong. It gives you such a dramatic idea of what damage looks like that anything short of collapse starts to seem acceptable.

I skipped, as ninety percent of the population does, reading the excessively long, impossible-to-understand terms and conditions of my new phone. For that, I spent a year in hard labor on a mayonnaise farm somewhere in the bowels of America.

In conversations, this creates a cycle where reason and logic are often drowned out by emotional responses. People aren’t just debating issues—they’re defending their identity.

In today's digital age, consumers are constantly bombarded with a multitude of marketing messages, making it difficult for brands to stand out and capture their attention.