Cheap Talk

Functional vs. Appropriate

In communication, there is a fundamental difference between being functional and being appropriate.

Let’s put it in an example: An email is a phenomenal tool for exchanging information. Yet, you would never use it to invite a lifelong friend to your wedding. It is functional, but it is "cheap."

In the current social media landscape—supercharged by AI—we are witnessing the global triumph of Cheap Talk.

The Death of the Barrier

For years, there was a technical barrier to entry. If you couldn't create, you couldn't communicate. Today, that barrier has vanished, and this is great news, but there’s a flip side. An explosion of content from people who can produce, but still cannot communicate. We are drowning in "Red Calendar" content. Posts triggered by holidays or trends that everyone follows because they feel "safe." It pollutes the feed, but it fails to build affinity.

The Ryanair Trap: Virality as Brand Suicide

When a brand like Ryanair succeeds with a specific, disruptive tone, it becomes a benchmark. Soon, high-profile brands and luxury labels begin to mirror that same "unfiltered" style in pursuit of virality.

This is a strategic error. When you adopt a persona that doesn't reflect your internal reality just to please an algorithm, you aren't being "edgy", you’re having an identity crisis. You are trading your uniqueness for a temporary spike in engagement.

The Result: As Rory Sutherland suggested, narrow economic rationalism produces a world rich in goods, but deficient in meaning.

The ads are "clean," but they are detached from the reality of the person viewing them.

From Content Creation to Documentation

If "Cheap Talk" is the disease, Contextual Participation is the cure.

The most resonant brands will be those that stop "producing content" and start "documenting reality." This requires a shift in perspective:

• Embrace the Problem: Instead of presenting a polished, artificial solution, show the process. What is the actual problem you are solving?

• The Beauty of Failure: Documenting the struggle, the pivots, and even the failures makes an audience part of the journey. It creates a "squad" mentality rather than a "vendor-client" hierarchy.

• Contextual Sensitivity: Stop looking at competitors. Look at the world. How is the world changing? How is your audience actually feeling today?