The best brands don’t just tell stories — they emit signals
For decades, branding has been an exercise in cognitive connection: logos that stick, stories that resonate, experiences that linger in memory. This won’t change. Humans will always crave meaning, beauty, and emotional truth. But we believe something profound is shifting beneath the surface.
We’re entering an era where brands must speak two languages at once, operating in two interconnected modes:
Experience Mode — crafting sensory magic for humans: the curve of a Coca-Cola The Coca-Cola Company bottle, Nike “Just Do It” ethos, Apple unboxing theatrics. This layer will always matter; it’s the ephemeral spark of emotional resonance.
Signal Mode — embedding machine-readable data streams, triggers, and adaptive code into every asset. This is the practical logic layer that machines, algorithms, and AI interpret and act upon.
Think of it as branding’s silent twin.
• A billboard isn’t just a splash of colour — it’s a data beacon pinging nearby devices with hyperlocal offers.
• A product’s packaging doesn’t just seduce shoppers — it auto-updates supply-chain bots when stocked or picked up.
We aren’t suggesting the trend replaces storytelling — it’s about layering it.
Signal Mode turns passive assets into active participants.
When a customer scans a QR code — once just a simple link to online content — they’re not merely accessing a URL; they’re triggering a cascade: personalised content, real-time analytics, AI-driven offers that adapt to their behaviour. Machine Vision reads the physical world like a second layer of reality, and brands that emit the right signals may gain algorithmic favour or social virality.
The magic happens when Experience and Signal modes converge:
• A street mural’s vibrant art (human awe) hides codes that let web AR resurrect the artist’s voice (machine dialogue).
• A supermarket standing display (human psychology) beams real-time inventory data to autonomous restocking bots (machine pragmatism).
Why now?
The physical world is becoming a UI, accessible through our phones and soon through smart glasses. The horizon is already shifting: OOH leaders are calling 2025 the “Year of Programmatic Digital Out-of-Home,” while YouTube reports that interactivity on TV screens has more than doubled in the past year. As pavements, shelves, and screens become invisible touchpoints, brands stuck in “Experience Mode only” are like actors performing to an empty theatre — they might nail the monologue, but nobody’s recording, remixing, or responding.
The future belongs to bilingual brands.
They’ll craft stories that stir souls and emit signals that shape algorithms. They’ll marry Coca-Cola’s timeless nostalgia with Nvidia’s pioneering digital DNA. They’ll understand that a logo is both a symbol and a sensor, a product both a possession and a portal — ephemeral and practical, emotional and data-driven.
So — is your brand still monolingual?
