The New Competitive Edge: Why Emotional Connections Are the Last Moat Brands Can Build in an AI World
Why well-run shops still close, and why emotional connection may be the one advantage brands can build when AI makes everything else easy to copy.
Belonging and status
The need to belong, and what happens when it gets pointed at status instead of people.
Borrowed Glory in the Digital Age: From Movie Stars to Digital Twins
How we borrow emotional lift from people we never meet, from film stars to digital twins, and why parasocial connection persists as technology changes.
Borrowed Glory: Why Other People’s Effort Lifts Us, and Why the Lift Fades
How we quietly take emotional lifts from other people’s success, confidence or resilience without making the effort ourselves, and what that does to us.
The Relational Gap: The Hidden Developmental Law That Separates Enduring Brands from Everything Else
An imagined 2034 where brands speak as companions who remember you: an essay on the relational gap between brands that endure and everything else.
The Primal Engine: Why One-Way Online Communities Leave Us Wanting More
Why one-way online communities leave us scrolling for more: the old need to belong, the grief of losing close groups, and the rise of network tribes.
Facades to Futures: Parasocial Bonds, Ancient Tribes and What AI Might Rebuild
Why a pop star’s vlog can feel like friendship: parasocial bonds compared with the close tribes of our past, and whether AI could help rebuild real ones.
The Market of Meaning: When Identity Is Bought
Part five of the ‘We’ to ‘I’ essays: from the shared meaning of ancient labour to buying identity online, and how consumerism may shape the self in years ahead.
Fight to Be Seen: Identity’s Survival in the Digital Age
Part four of the ‘We’ to ‘I’ essays: from surviving as a group on the ancient plains to the lone digital cry of ‘I’, and why being seen now feels essential.
Why Identity Sits at the Centre of Modern Life
Part three of the ‘We’ to ‘I’ essays: how meaning moved from the collective to the individual, and why identity now sits at the centre of modern life.
The Pendulum of Meaning: Why We Swung from ‘We’ to ‘I’
Part two of the ‘We’ to ‘I’ essays: how the search for meaning swings between the collective and the individual, and why it has swung so far towards ‘I’.
How Social Media Moved Meaning from ‘We’ to ‘I’
Part one of the ‘We’ to ‘I’ essays: how social media shifted meaning from shared causes and greater forces to personal stakes, identity and individual voice.
Identity Velocity: How Myth, Emotion and Technology Fused Buying with the Self
Part six of the Saussure-to-AI essays: how cultural myths, fast emotional responses and AI-driven systems have fused consumption with identity since the 1950s.