As a former audiovisual director with many years of experience in storytelling, I still keep a collection of ads that marked milestones and helped shape how we saw ourselves and the world before social media became part of everyday life.
There is an important parallel here: when we build technology, the outcomes we encourage matter as much as the capabilities we create. What are we optimising for? Which behaviours are we rewarding? Whose perspectives are we overlooking?
Recently, I revisited a Gillette ad and reflected on what its message might mean for the systems we design today.
When did making people react become more important than making people connect?
The ad was part of Gillette’s “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be” campaign, launched in January 2019. It reinterpreted the brand’s classic slogan, “The Best a Man Can Get”, to address bullying, sexual harassment and harmful behaviours associated with masculinity in the context of the #MeToo movement.
For me, it is an example of a brand expressing its values through its advertising. It reminds me of what great advertising can do: connect with something deeply human and encourage us to become better versions of ourselves.
Good advertising understands people. It gives us something worth feeling, remembering and acting on. Commercial results and a positive human message can coexist within the same campaign.
I think about the optimism of some of the great campaigns of the 1980s: the belief that communication could challenge attitudes, bring people together and inspire positive change. That era wasn’t perfect, but that ambition is worth preserving.
Today, I worry about what happens when engagement becomes the overriding goal. If outrage, fear and humiliation keep us watching, what incentive is there to encourage empathy?
An angry comment counts as engagement. But what have we actually created?
This is what I think of as “the Twitter paradox”: connecting people while rewarding polarisation.
For me, Twitter’s original character limit illustrates how a seemingly small design decision can leave less room for context and nuance, potentially favouring slogans over thoughtful political debate.
When social listening informs AI systems, advertising and corporate strategy, are we understanding people, or are we reproducing the incentives of the platforms we observe? For me, AI governance starts with questioning that difference.
These questions reach far beyond marketing. They touch our political conversations, the leaders we reward, the divisions between us and the emotional environment our children grow up in. Algorithms aren’t the only influence, but we should question the behaviours our platforms encourage.
When did we become so comfortable measuring attention without asking about its consequences?
For those of us designing AI systems, this is also an architectural question. Our objectives, evaluation criteria and controls help determine which behaviours a system reinforces and whether harmful patterns are challenged or amplified.
Communication can still sell, persuade and perform while leaving people with more hope, dignity and connection.
That is an ambition worth bringing into the technology we build.
