Have algorithms dulled your brand?

There is no creativity in passivity.

This week, we are absorbed in Kyle Chayka’s Filterworld, a stunning exploration of how internet algorithms have diminished the ability to organically shape personal taste, dulling culture overall. The more seamless our internet experiences, the less we have to think. The less we have to think, the more disconnected we become from criticality, innovation, and nuance. We become passive. There is no creativity in passivity.

At Antonym, we are sensitive to this evolution, concerned about what it’s doing to creativity and communication. As a team, we’ve spent the last few months interrogating how we can inject more nuance into our work, restructuring the ways we engage with clients, redesigning our intake and immersion to provoke more thoughtful interrogation, devising new methods for presenting strategy so that we remain ever-true to the promise behind our name: a brand voice agency that delivers strategic messaging, verbal identity, and brand strategy that is distinct, never derivative, and avoids mimicry at all costs. Flashy words are just fluff when they’re not connected to anything real.

How has the Filterworld affected your brand?

• Where have your messaging or reason to believe become passive?

• Which brands are saying what you want to say better than you are?

• Are your messaging and strategy ownable, or could another brand reasonably claim the same about their products?

• Where have you let data compromise authenticity?

• Where in your brand is innovation lacking?

If your answers to any of the above illuminate room for growth, we’re thinking ahead of the game in this realm and would love to help.