Keeping it real time

The hyperconnectivity enabled by platforms like Facebook allows us to cherrypick our lives, choosing only the best bits to present as reality and broadcast to our community. Who broadcast back an equally varnished version of their time in Corfu. Or wherever. 

More insidiously, social media has proved to be anything but social. Too often, the algorithms involved feed a negative “clickbait” narrative, polarising opinion and debate. 

More profoundly still, the net result of hyperconnectivity hasn't been more connectedness. Rather, according to Sherry Turkle, professor of social sciences at MIT, it has created the "illusion of companionship, without the demands of friendship". The result, as she explains in her book, Alone Together, is that the more superficially connected we become, the more lonely we feel. 

The arrival of the internet, and its mass adoption 20 years ago, looked set to create a new age of shared knowledge, connection and belonging. And, of course, much of that promise has come true. The advancement of technology has revolutionised modern life in many positive ways. 

But in socio-cultural terms, it has chipped away at the foundations of what is and isn't real, what is and isn't artificial, what can and can't be believed. 

A growing scepticism towards our institutions, our media, our political class and traditional figures of authority has resulted in a reality gap; the gap between what we are told is happening and what we believe is happening, or should happen. A gap that is too readily filled by “fake news”, conspiracy theories, half-truths and sensationalism. 

In this context, the last thing required, you might argue, is the arrival of a powerful new technology capable of taking artifice and illusion to a whole new level. A technology that democratises the ability to fabricate, fictionalise and simulate every aspect of human creativity, from images and sound to film and narrative. 

But generative AI has arrived and the new age of illusion is well and truly upon us, led by an array of rapidly evolving large language and image generation models such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, MidJourney, Veo3 and Firefly. 

Just like the last wave of technology, the advances offered by these new arrivals will be immense, but the downsides will also be considerable. 

In an increasingly low-trust world, the question for marketers then becomes, how do you protect your brand from these downsides? 

Well, the first thing you must do is an AI impact assessment, auditing the four main dimensions of threat and opportunity; to your brand and business model, your customer interface, your discoverability (especially in light of agentic search) and your production capabilities. I'm sure your agency has already completed an assessment for you (but if not, I know an agency that can). 

Beyond this, the most important thing that brand owners can do is run towards the real. Embrace it. Celebrate it. Relish it. 

And the surest way to be real is to be real-time. In an age of artifice and simulation, the greatest asset for a brand will be its ability to act and behave with uncalculated immediacy. 

From a communications perspective, this has greatest relevance for two areas of the brand experience: mass communication and the sharp end of customer service. 

Starting with customer service, the brands that will thrive most are the brands that can resolve customer issues and problems as close to real time as possible. 

This is, of course, very difficult to achieve in every case, especially at volume. And yet, in the words of a reforming chief marketing officer I work with, there's a growing tendency for tech departments to morph customer service into customer swerve-ice; creating more hand-offs, side steps, re-directions and offloads than we saw in the whole of the victorious Lions series. This is no way to win trust, even if it wins rugby matches. 

Right at the other end of the marketing spectrum is the way your brand behaves in top-of-funnel, mass communication channels. This is an area where real time is already a crucial factor. But its importance is set to grow exponentially in the era of AI.

Real-time, destination viewing, be it sport or entertainment, will be the gold standard of class-leading media plans. Despite the price advantages offered by SVOD and BVOD, shortcuts will be avoided, and the backbone of the media laydown will involve shared moments, experienced collectively at once. This is the new crucible of brand-building, especially when matched with real-time brand activations that further reinforce engagement, proximity and trust. 

As technological life grows more artificial, more confected and more illusory, the strongest brands will be those most present in the moment. Because in a chimeric world, the most difficult thing to fake is the sincerity of real time.