A fish out of water

Rebecca, a curious seven-year-old, wandered along the shoreline at low tide with her mum one Sunday morning.The tide was out, leaving behind a scattered mess of seaweed, shells – and heartbreak.

Hundreds of tiny sea creatures were stranded on the sand. Most had already perished, their small forms still and silent under the rising sun – save for one. Rebecca crouched down, her eyes wide and brimming with tears.

“Mum, look!” she whispered, lifting a barely alive baby fish cupped gently in her hands. Its tiny body trembled, mouth opening and closing in a desperate gasp. Rebecca’s eyes filled with worry, and she instinctively cradled it closer, shielding it from the wind as if her warmth alone could keep it alive.

“I’ve got to save it,” she said, her voice small but certain. “I’m going to put it back in the water.”

Her mum sighed, watching the waves roll in and out in the distance. “You’re being very kind,” she said softly, “but there must be a million of them. Believe me, it won’t make any difference.”

Rebecca’s little brow furrowed. She whimpered, “But why, mummy … why won’t it make any difference?”

“Because it’s just one in a million, my sweet, caring girl,” came the gentle reply.

Rebecca turned and ran barefoot across the sand toward the sea. She waded out until the water reached her knees, then gently placed the fish back into the waves, watching as it flicked its tail and swam away.

Looking back at her mum with quiet defiance, she said, “It will for that one.”

Moral: Belief lives in the head. Care lives in the heart.

The Heartbeat of Every Great Brand

For decades, brands have relied on RTBs – Reasons to Believe. The rational stuff: facts, features, benefits. They matter, sure. But they’re not what motivates people to purchase.

RTCs are different. They’re emotional. They’re human. They speak to what people want, hope for, and value most.

Emotional connections come in many forms. Some are universal – rooted in human needs like safety, belonging, and meaning. Others are personal, shaped by individual values and aspirations.

RTCs make people feel something about your brand—before they’re asked to do anything with it.

They force us to ask: Why? Why? And why again.

In a world drowning in over 10,000 branded messages a day, where 75% of brands could disappear tomorrow and no one would care, where we forget 90% of the information we receive in a week*, and where loyalty follows simplicity, it’s not enough to make people believe. You must make them care.

So, the killer question for every brand and every creative brief is this:

Why would anyone care?

*Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve

The RTB is Dead. Long Live the RTC.

Nike, Disney, Lego, Patagonia, Apple – these brands have always understood the power of emotion over logic. They’re what we call irrational brands – brands that defy convention.

Nike inspires. Disney imagines. Lego plays. Patagonia rallies. Apple empowers. They’re unshakable in their values – and they lean into emotion, not logic.

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPod, he didn’t talk about megabytes. He said, ‘1,000 songs in your pocket.’ Simple. Emotive. Unforgettable.

That’s the power of RTCs.

At Taxi Studio, RTCs sit in the driver’s seat. They’re designed to tap into the emotional levers that connect brands to people on a human level. RTCs act as shortcuts in decision-making—both conscious and subconscious.

Speaking of the subconscious, Professor Gerald Zaltman* found that 95% of our purchase decisions are made subconsciously.  As a result, creative practitioners have an ethical responsibility goes beyond simply creating work that stands out from competitors. Given that only five percent of purchase decisions are made consciously, we must skillfully and deliberately create reasons to care.

Our constant question? Why would anyone care?

*Gerald Zaltman: Joseph C. Wilson Professor Emeritus at Harvard Business School

 

The Data is Clear: RTCs Win

The payoff for being unforgettable has doubled since 2016.

Kantar BrandZ data shows that the world’s strongest brands – those that are salient, meaningful, and different—have dramatically outpaced the market. In 2016, the BrandZ portfolio outperformed the S&P 500 by 45 points. Today, the gap is 82. That’s nearly double in a decade – and the next decade looks even more brand-driven.

AI doesn’t recommend based on site quality or backlinks anymore. Search engines and social algorithms prioritise brands – not keywords. In a world ruled by algorithms, brand is the human connection that machines can’t replicate.

The brands that survive will be the ones that give people a meaningful reason to care.

As Melissa Dalrymple, leader of design at McKinsey North America, notes in her article Made to measure: Getting design leadership metrics right (2021), brands that define a clear North Star metric aligned with customer experience consistently outperform their peers. This reinforces the principle that emotional resonance, not functional proof points, is the true driver of brand success.

This isn’t just theory – it’s a commercial imperative. According to EY’s State of Consumer Products Report: Reclaiming Relevance (2025), scale alone no longer guarantees relevance. Big brands, they say, face a ‘slow erosion of confidence’ as consumers expect more emotional connection, not just rational proof.

EY’s data echoes what we see every day: brands that succeed in today’s market are those that build emotional relevance. Those that don’t risk heading into obscurity.

Source: EY, State of Consumer Products Report: Reclaiming Relevance, May 2025. Extracts used under fair dealing for the purposes of commentary and review.

Unearthing Reasons to Care

RTCs aren’t about what brands sell. They’re about why people should care.

That care starts by making brands part of people’s daily lives – and grows by wrapping functional stories in emotional layers.

Brands must ask of themselves: Would anyone care? Sometimes the answer is clear. Other times, it requires digging a little deeper.

Here’s some helpful tips:

Soul SearchingTruth often hides in plain sight. When advertising legend, Sir John Hegarty spotted a dusty duty statement at the Audi factory, he unearthed Vorsprung durch Technik – a line that became a global brand signature that piqued people’s natural curiosity. Soul searching demands curiosity.

Get Out of the AquariumAs preeminent brand strategist Martin Weigel warns, focus groups are like watching dolphins in an aquarium. If you want to understand what makes people care, go where they live. See what they see. Feel what they feel.

Ask AI WhyAI can help distil mountains of data—but its real value lies in the questions we ask. Train a GPT on your audience. Push it. Challenge it. Ask why—again and again—until you reach the truth. It’s not going to be definitive, but it will certainly get the (human) brain juices flowing.

The Truth is Uncomfortable

Most people don’t care about brands. But people are always searching for better things – and brand have a part to play in that – but to be persuasive they must be distinctive, meaningful and emotionally relevant, and create lasting positive impressions.

When this – the holy grail for brands – is achieved, they transition from just ‘standing out’ to being ‘sought out’.

The question therefore isn’t: How do we make a sale? It’s: How do we make people care? That’s the one that counts.

In fact, in a world of AI, algorithms, and endless mediocre content, embracing irrationality might just be the most rational thing a brand can do.