Nearly every trend, technology and social factor points to consumption right now. Energy abundance will give us more to buy, AI will give us more content to ingest, and even possible programs like UBI will give us more resources to acquire with. 

That creates a fatal contradiction in our global notion of status, which has always relied on access (to money, knowledge, etc.) to delineate social rank. What happens when we approach a world where anyone can consume anything in some way or another?

This is where the anti-consumption of Conspicuous Commitment comes in. 

In his article earlier this year, our senior strategist Zach Lamb wrote about how our rules for status are moving from the self-indulgence of conspicuous consumption to the self-denial of what he calls conspicuous commitment: the rise of people showcasing their unwavering dedication to hard self-work and ascetic restraint.

But that was just the first half of this discussion. 

Zach joined me on our podcast Unseen Unknown this week to discuss the second half: how certain brands have been moving to this new model of meaning making, and how brands in any category do the same.

We also spoke with culture writer W. David Marx, author of Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change to understand what brought us here in the first place.

The new brand playbook is to give your users opportunities to experience mastery over the self.

Making people commit to themselves can take many forms, from rituals of transformation to guided journeys, strategic friction, and finding novel ways to optimize.

It’s deeply personal and offers the ultimate flex: a chance to create oneself rather than consume from others. 

It's likely your users are already seeking these new signals but have few places to experience them. When they do see conspicuous commitment in a brand, they engage in wholly new ways.

Or read the full episode transcript while you listen here.

Links to interesting things mentioned in this episode:

• Conspicuous Commitment Is the Next Era Of Status (Concept Bureau)

• ‘The Most Measured Man in Human History’ (Vice)

• High Fidelity Society is Reorganizing the World (Concept Bureau)

• Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid by Jonathan Haidt (The Atlantic)

• Brokenism (Tablet)

• Futurist Predicts Humans Will Achieve Immortality By 2030 (IFLScience)

Act Your Age

Here's what we've been consuming.

What if Generative AI turned out to be a Dud? (Marcus on AI): “But what has me worried right now is not just the possibility that the whole generative AI economy—still based more on promise than actual commercial use—could see a massive, gut-wrenching correction, but that we are building our entire global and national policy on the premise that generative AI will be world-changing in ways that may in hindsight turn out to have been unrealistic."

A Sperm Donor Chases a Role in the Lives of the 96 Children He Fathered (Wall Street Journal): "The relative ease of finding the identity and whereabouts of sperm donors is remaking traditional views of what comprises a family. Parents say introducing a biological father to their children carries potential rewards, as well as the risk of hurt feelings and failed expectations. More than a million Americans have been conceived through artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization; the number born of sperm donors isn’t tracked."

The New Old Age (The Atlantic): "In the 21st century, another new phase is developing, between the career phase and senescence. People are living longer lives. If you are 60 right now, you have a roughly 50 percent chance of reaching 90... Some call it “Adulthood II” or, the name I prefer, the “Encore Years.” For many, it’s a delightful and rewarding phase, but the transition into it can be rocky... Most revolutions come from the young. Is it possible that the one we need now will be driven by the old?"

Is It Time to Do Away With “Good Taste”? (Architectural Digest): "We hear a lot about aesthetics and morality today too, but the context has changed: Because of climate change, products made with (or indeed, from) fossil fuels are morally dubious. Things that are made sustainably or involve reusing existing materials to avoid extraction are more desirable, even if their contribution to the health of the planet may actually be negligible. Though mid-19th-century concerns were quite different from our own, they have something in common: a belief that there is such a thing as too much ease and convenience."

Goodbye Bathtub and Living Room. America’s Homes Are Shrinking (Wall Street Journal): "They are axing dining areas, bathtubs and separate living rooms. Secondary bedrooms and loft spaces are shrinking and sometimes disappearing.  At the same time, they are increasing the size of multiuse rooms like kitchens and great rooms. Shared spaces like bunk rooms and jack-and-jill bathrooms, which are located between and shared by two bedrooms, are on the rise. In some cases, the kitchen island has become the only eating area in the home."

Trust Fund

Quick hits of insight in socially acceptable places.

• Engineering mistrust for storytelling
   

• One way to win in the trust business 
   

• What most changes your personality
   

• The construct of "mattering" for children
   

• The end of a majority
   

• Hiding their vegan-ness

Gut Feeling

Creative inspirations for the other side of your brain.

• When you give a tree an email address
   

• Painfully stylish movies
   

• Breathing color into the past 
   

• When you ask a European VC to join the call

I've written before that trust gained through safety is not the same as trust gained through risk. 

Many brands work to make the environment for conversion safe, but there is also always the option of just making the risk of conversion worth it.

Skincare brands like Neutrogina and Caudalie have always worked to make conversion easy with beauty quizzes and bundled formulations meant to treat common conditions, but The Ordinary did the opposite - unbundling active ingredients, adding technical labels, and forcing people to understand the chemistry of interactions between products if they didn't want to harm their skin. But it was absolutely worth it to know that you had full control over your products, and full understanding of how they worked.

Although that was years ago, the beauty industry has never been the same since, and arguably no brand has ever had as much of an impact in that time.

In fact, I'm hard pressed to think of more than a handful of examples in any industry who make the risk worth it. 

The world continues moving toward de-risking and making things easy (the theme of today's newsletter and podcast), but that creates a shallow form of trust. 

When you find ways to maintain the risk but make it worth it, you force a valuable upfront exchange. People are made to commit to something quickly, even before they click, buy or call. 

Like everything else in strategy, trust is not an on/ off button. It is a lever that can be pushed to different limits for different uses. 

Yours,

Jasmine Bina
Founder & CEO
Concept Bureau, Inc.