Bloom Thinks: Making Functional More Forceful Part 3

What role might statusful functionality play in thefuture?

Some forecasters have predicted that agentic AI will make brands obsolete. Their argument starts by saying that the ultimate purpose of a brand is to match a product to a consumer’s want, need or lifestyle. Agentic AI will learn how todo this more quickly and reliably than we can do it ourselves. All our distracting moods and biases will be cut out of the process, resulting in a perfect match, every time.

It’s a solid argument. But it assumes people are perfectly rational. We’re not. We all do a ton of crazy things led by hearts (and sometimes other anatomy) before heads. 

This is where the messy stuff of human emotion comes in. And status is the emotion that rules them all.

Back in the day we worked on a global redesign of Domestos toilet cleaner. Very functional indeed. But it’s more than a germ killer. It’s a hero. So we borrowed cues from superhero culture. Superhero movies had shifted away from the biff-bang-pow muscle of Schwarzenegger or Stallone; to the smart precision of Daniel Craig’s Bond or Matt Damon’s Bourne. Our new identity design added engineered iconography and detailing to every asset and touchpoint. It made the brand more than simply a functional purchase. It elevated the look feel to become and intelligent, statusful choice, in an aisle full of blunt instruments.

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Would agentic AI make this choice for us? In making a perfectly rational choice it would just recommend the most effective germ killer, based on what everyone else buys, and what you bought in the past. It wouldn’t consider how you personally felt in that moment. That why our moods and biases are important. It’s not just choosing what we need. It’s how we want to feel.

More recently we redesigned Baby Dove. Its functional benefit is moisturising skincare. To make it look statusful we mimicked the ‘smooshy’ style of aspirational nursery and book design. So mums and dads would both see the care they need, and feel the aspiration they want. 

In future there might not be much we can do about AI’s influence over our choices. But if it gets as big as they say then our homes and bodies will become even more important as signals of our individual humanity and independence. The brands that help us look after them will become even more intentional, more statusful, more personal.

In a world that’s becoming less human, statusful functionality will help brands be more human, and be chosen more intentionally.

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