Toniq

When brands involve surveys and research in their messaging, what are they actually doing, and what do they owe the consumer?

This happens all too often. We get attached to things, and then those things close, vanish, or change. It makes me think about brands and how people get them entangled in their lives, and what they do when the brand goes away.

Why is it that when we have something straightforward, someone feels the need to improve it by adding more? More gadgets. More add-ons. Ore geegaws. More connections. More cheese. Why is it always more? Why can’t a thing just do a thing and leave it at that?

Maybe I should head to Instacare and tell the doctor I suspect a case of AI fatigue. I can picture him nodding, opening his laptop, typing “AI fatigue” into ChatGPT, and reading me the symptoms generated by the very thing I’m apparently exhausted by.

The old T-zone nonsense is a perfect example. When the factual claim became risky, the emotional one stepped in to do the work. The product didn’t change. The story did. And the story got intentionally vaguer.

Well, one reason might be human beings, their needs and wants. Do we want our jobs to be taken over by algorithms? The Luddites asked the same questions as they headed into the Industrial Revolution. With technology, there is always the question of just because we can do it, does that mean we should do it?

What about brands that get rejected? How do they respond? How do they continue on? Have any brands been thoroughly rejected, pulled themselves up, and made something of themselves?

When we talk about brands, we talk about brand personality, brand wants, brand traits, etc. We make brands out to be people with quirks and idiosyncrasies, a personality, and a drive. If brands are indeed like people, would it be smart for a brand to have a bucket list?

How do brands keep up with an ever-shifting definition of reality? Is the fictionalized reality we consume more inviting than the real thing? And if so, how should a brand respond?

 I read an article that said AI is beating the average human in creativity tests. You heard that right, it has been shown that advanced AI models can now outperform average humans in standardized creativity tests.

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.

Why. Why do? Why does? Why would? Those questions that often get ignored tend to hang in the air until someone, or some study, finally answers them. Why has always been an important question to me, and it felt like the right time to dig a little deeper into it.

Not just politics, but every aspect of life could use a little bit of a history lesson. Especially brands. Yes, that’s right: brands need a solid understanding of history if they wish to continue into the future.

Safe from AI. Isn’t that a weird statement? Technology has given us this tool, this miraculous engine that will give us answers, talk to us like a friend, help us build a presentation deck, write a thank-you card, and more, and our first thought is, how do we protect ourselves from this thing we created?

I am sure that psychologists would have a field day with this pattern in my life. The desire to be organized, taking steps to get organized, and then being inundated by a lack of organization to the point of not being able to find the desk calendar.