What I keep seeing across categories and client conversations is an entire industry trying to solve a 2026 problem with a 2005 solution. We’re still running attention-era playbooks in a
belief-era world.
A few years ago, I participated in a pitch for a legacy alcohol brand. The audience that had grown up with the brand had aged out of the market. The generation coming up
didn’t see themselves in it at all.
The brand ultimately went with a heritage campaign and traditional media placements. It was good creative, but designed for an audience that had
already moved on. Unfortunately, the client tried to buy relevance when they needed to earn it.
How we broke trust, one stage at a time
The attention economy made sense when it
was built. Social platforms rewarded brands that showed up authentically. Trust was implicit.
Then we monetized it. Paid media interrupted. Influencers turned connection into transaction. And
AI has made it possible to produce an infinite amount of content, with no guarantee that any of it is real.
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At every stage, we got better at being seen. At every stage, we got worse at being
believed.
What belief actually looks like
Buzz is not belief. The gap between the two is where brands are bleeding.
Buzz spikes. Belief compounds. Buzz earns you a
moment. Belief earns you a relationship. Duolingo has created one of the most culturally present brands in the world through a consistent, unhinged, deeply ownable voice that never breaks character --
on TikTok, in app notifications, at the Super Bowl, and at Charli XCX concerts. Over 100 million people believe in it, too.
Rare Beauty and its Rare Impact Fund are another outlier. The Selena
Gomez brand embedded mental health as a structural commitment. The result is a brand Gen Z doesn’t just buy, it’s one they advocate for. They see themselves in it. That kind of brand has
staying power, and its value compounds.
These brands aren’t doing something technically better. They’re doing something categorically different.
The problem is
structural, and it starts at the top
If you’re a CMO, brand lead, or founder, you don’t need a new agency brief. You need honest answers to three questions:
Can you
articulate what your brand believes in -- and does this belief show up everywhere?
Can your CMO and CEO give the same answer to what
your brand is for?
Are you optimizing for belief, or the next spike?
The trust recession ends with belief
You have a choice to make. You can keep chasing attention in a world that is exhausted by it. Or you can recognize
that the market condition right now is skeptical, disconnected, and starving for something consistent and real.
Brands that resist the
spike, do the alignment work, and stay the course, come out the other side with something no campaign budget can buy: A constituency. A community. People who actually believe.
That’s worth more than buzz. That’s worth more than a moment. That’s a business.