There is room for serious brands

We have to buck the trend around rewarding the superficial

Detail, scrutiny, and critical analysis—I feel exhausted just reading these words and phrases. It’s enough to prompt me to open Instagram and gobble up 90 minutes of my life, indulging in a Reel binge.

Yet, I am trying to force myself into a mindset that sees these words as a positive opportunity. Through practice, I am attempting to lean into the idea that spending time with a subject is essential and that asking decent, informed questions and scrutinising answers is good, albeit with a significantly reduced dopamine hit.

Critical Analysis In Decline

There’s evidence to suggest that critical thought and analysis are declining. Our fast-paced lives, full of distractions in our pockets, and a social media architecture that rewards moving on quickly to the next topic rather than spending time with anything for longer than a minute have, in my humble opinion, created a critical thought crisis.

In this intoxicating environment, brands have responded, launching campaigns forensically focused on a particular issue only to ditch the focus within 24 hours in favour of a new trending side quest. Businesses have climbed over each other to try and signal as much intent as possible, as quickly as possible, before congratulating themselves on the output (note, not outcome) and moving on to the next ‘big’ thing.

It’s bled into our politics. Manifestos have been repackaged as ‘strategy’ documents. Still, a cursory glance beyond the TikTok post and X thread indicates that the content contains bucketloads of intent but is barren in detail and practical action. Indeed, for the most part, strategy documents end with ‘the strategy bit will be with you soon’.

Impact suffers

This means that measurement has deteriorated as a result. It’s hard to determine specific and meaningful outcomes that a business, county or country can reflect on and build a strategy around. It’s far easier to embrace a superficial approach and just measure some outputs and either hope for the best or quietly move on to the next harvesting of outputs.

Better still, set some arbitrary targets to showcase your intent, and then leave out any details on how to hit them. The entire net-zero agenda is built around that, and there are a few world leaders in Baku right now debating a set of numbers that have long lost any meaning and are still peddled as some strategic benchmark.

Be serious

It’s a hard sell to suggest to a brand, organisation or personality to build a reputation for seriousness. It’s almost seen as encouraging people to be difficult. But we have to reframe this discussion.

Asking incisive questions is a superpower, not a weakness or a character flaw. It’s not ‘difficult’ to question the efficacy of an action or ask for more detail about a plan or strategy.

It’s a good thing to stick to something for longer than an Instagram story or election cycle, and to not always be dictated to by the breathless news agenda but to remain steadfast in delving deep into an issue and maintaining attention and focus.

I’d love to see more serious brands. More serious organisations and certainly more serious politicians.

The opportunity is for us to become more focused on impact and outcomes than a set of outputs. The risk in continuing down the path of superficial enlightenment is that we sleepwalk into a world of dopamine and do nothing of substance.