Barnaby has a move. Around four fifteen every afternoon he walks onto the desk, sits directly on the trackpad, and stares at me until the situation resolves in his favor. He does not meow first. He does not build to it. He identifies the one surface I actually need and takes it.
Six months into working out of my dining room, I have decided he is the most sophisticated marketer in the house.
This year broke the attention math for everybody. Every brand moved its budget into feeds that were already full, the feeds got louder, the loudness stopped working, and the response to that was more loudness. I have watched this from inside brand strategy rooms. The recommendation is almost always to post more.
Barnaby does not post more. He picks one surface that actually matters, occupies it completely, and declines to negotiate.
His three principles, as far as I can reconstruct them, are the ones I keep trying to sell clients.
One, demand attention loudly, where loud means committed rather than high volume. Liquid Death puts water in a tallboy and tells you to murder your thirst, and the confidence of that is doing more work than any media spend. Loud is a posture, not a decibel level.
Two, ignore what does not serve you. Barnaby has never once chased a laser pointer. He watched the dot, he watched me, he made a judgment about my seriousness, and he went back to sleep. Oatly built an entire voice by ignoring the dairy category playbook completely: no farms, no sunrise, no glass on a wooden table. Most brands lose their distinctiveness by answering things they were never asked.
Three, never apologize for existing. There is a real difference between accountability, which brands owe people constantly, and the reflexive flinch that shows up as a brand hedging its own point of view in the caption. Steak-umm spent this year writing earnest threads about media literacy and did not once apologize for being a frozen beef company doing it.
Most brands lose their distinctiveness by answering things they were never asked.
The uncomfortable version of all this is that attention is not really the scarce thing. Willingness to be disliked is. Every brand I have watched go quiet went quiet because a committee wanted it to be acceptable to everyone in the room, and acceptable to everyone reads to everyone as nothing.
Truffles, for the record, disagrees with her brother entirely. Her strategy is to sit two feet away, in perfect silence, until I feel the weight of it and give in. Different playbook, identical results, which is annoying for anyone hoping I would land on a single rule here.