Are You Zigging or Zagging?
From the Library of Quick Study, September 2024
Hey. Hi. Hello. This is The Other 90, a blog about strategy from your friends at Quick Study. Today’s newsletter takes about 4 minutes to read.
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Let’s start here:
Is there a difference between brand universes and brand homework? If there is, most brands don’t see it. This distinction is the subject of our latest Study Guide published last month: The Busywork Economy Comes For Marketing.
The Study Guide digs into the disconnect between the motivations consumers have for using tools like social media and the expectations brands place on them because of their own internal bias toward creating more stuff. In other words, instead of delivering real & obvious value to consumers, most marketers pass the buck and make the consumer wade through the noise to figure out the value for themselves. If people need to write explainers about why you as a brand are doing what you’re doing, you might have over-complicated the equation a bit. (Yes, there are some brands where a complicated and deep story is effective, but those brands are exceedingly rare.)
Speaking of over-complicated and missing what consumers actually want: AI would like to have a word. So would restaurants. And the movie industry. It’s not just classic brands that create busywork, it’s a rot across any aspect of daily life where productivity and efficiency are conflated in the name of creating better results.
As brand stewards (which I assume you might be since you’re subscribed to this newsletter?), you have the power to adjust course. Start internally: if your internal functions are busywork-led, your outputs probably are, too. From there, think about how your marketing can express respect for your consumer, not carelessness towards them and their time. Remember that people feel overwhelmed and that they are losing pace. Don’t make matters even worse.
Anticuration Goes Mainstream²
In July, we wrote that our spring 2023 prediction of a tilt away from curation was starting to take real shape in consumer activities. That was before Instagram upped the number of photos in its carousel posts to 20, yet another nail in the coffin of the manicured social media experience. Anecdotally, my Instagram feed over the last few weeks has started to feel more like a random collection of Facebook albums from 2012 than the one-photo-so-you-best-choose-wisely mentality that made Instagram so different in its earlier days. The more things change, the more they circle back to places we’ve been before. (And while not anti-curation, adding the song on profile vibes of MySpace doesn’t help beat the “we’re out of ideas to increase engagement” accusations either.)
In similar news, vlogs seem to be headed back to a more stripped-down editing style. Yes, this is a classic “zag when they zig” to create differentiation, but the zag here is again pointing toward a more natural and less curated display of information.
There is a world where both the curated and uncurated can co-exist, and both do serve a purpose. As a brand, your north star should be value creation for the consumer, wherever that path may lead.
Logging Off
Is the ultimate zag just avoiding the internet as much as possible? A lot of what I’ve been reading lately points to our use of the internet as a bit of a doom loop. For instance, is scrolling on your phone actually a hobby? Or is it a “genuine cry for the warmth of other people” that’s lost its way? It’s the ol’ Catch-22 of Soloculture: we are literally not built for this much noise consumption and our brains aren’t meant to scale in ways the internet tells us to, but the only way to find others to be in community with is to make more noise.
With our devices making everything feel faster and louder than ever, quiet and rest become a luxury. Slowing down just isn’t in the cards for most people, but what if rest and leisure time were considered a human right instead of a luxury? Could we then maybe find a balance that puts the creep of technology back in its place? Until then, you know where to find us (scrolling the internet as a hobby while looking for new hobbies).
The Other 90 is written by Rob Engelsman, a former baby model and now Cofounder & Strategy Partner at Quick Study. To find out more about how we help brands and agencies get to smarter plans faster, email hello@quick.study. You can also find Quick Study on LinkedIn.
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