Four questions every brand must ask to prove they actually care
As human attention grows scarcer, brands need to think less about getting it and more about giving it. In this clip from You’re Not the Audience, Parliament Creative Director Calvin Ross Carl shares four questions he often includes in brand strategy work: How do we show attention? Did we care enough to perfect something? What deserves our attention? Are we fetishizing craft or actually proving it? He points to Apple’s packaging as attention made visible and warns against brands that only talk up quality. It’s from the You’re Not the Audience episode on beauty and attention, The Search for Beauty in the Age of Algorithms.
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Outline
Summary
With human attention in dwindling supply, Calvin Ross Carl offers questions brands can ask themselves internally, the kind he often includes in brand strategy documents. Each brand will navigate the future its own way, but these questions put attention first.
The first flips a familiar question: instead of asking how to get attention, ask how to show it, whether in support or in packaging, like Apple’s famously detailed boxes. The second asks whether a team cared enough to perfect something, a question that matters more as AI speeds up a build-it, ship-it mindset. The third asks what deserves the brand’s attention, remembering that brands are often their own audience.
The final question is one Calvin asks brands that care about craft: are we fetishizing craft or proving it? Talking up quality is easy, but craft people can see and feel is hard.
Highlights
Ask how to show attention, not just how to get it.
Apple’s packaging is a model of attention made visible.
AI-assisted development makes it more important to ask whether work was perfected.
Brands are often their own audience.
Fetishizing craft means using its language without doing the work.
Key insights
Attention shows up in details
Support interactions and packaging are everyday places where a brand can demonstrate that it cares.
Speed tempts teams to skip perfection
As digital products get built faster, pausing to perfect something and show it off becomes a differentiator.
Proven craft beats claimed craft
When a brand says it’s the best at everything, people tune out. Craft has to be felt in the work itself.
Detailed analysis
The four questions move from outward behavior to inward honesty. Showing attention and perfecting the work are about what customers experience, while asking what deserves attention and whether craft is real forces a brand to examine its own motives. Calvin ties the last question back to craft beer brands that leaned on the idea of craft until it lost meaning.
Conclusion
Brands that want to prove they care can start by asking better questions. The answers show up in the details people can actually see and feel.
Transcript
Okay, back to this idea of what brands can do now that attention is becoming more valuable. Human attention is in dwindling supply right now. So what are some things brands can do? What are questions brands can ask themselves at this point? I think each brand’s going to have to figure out how to navigate the future in their own way, whatever way is best for them. These are just some questions that come to mind for me. I do this in brand strategy documents a lot: here are questions to ask internally when you are creating things. And these would be ones that I think would challenge this idea of how do we put attention forward.
So one is just, normally we’re asking, how do we get attention? How do we get engagement? I think just simply flip it to, how do we show attention? That can show up in the way you handle support at a company. That can show up in just the way you prepare your products, if it’s in packaging. Everyone praises Apple’s packaging because it shouldn’t be as beautiful and artful as it is, and so detailed, but somehow it is. That shows attention. Little things like that, down to that level.
Another question is just: did we care enough to actually perfect something? Did we care enough to perfect something and show it off? Because especially on the tech side of it, we just have this build-it, ship-it kind of mindset. I think that’s going to start happening faster and more and more as AI starts assisting with developing digital products and things like that. So if you can sit back and ask, did we actually perfect something here, and can we show that to someone?
I think the other question is just, what deserves our attention? I think we forget as brands that we are humans who are usually our own audience a lot of the time. So it’s, what deserves our attention? How do we put that back into the ether, into the world, so people that care about what we do can share it?
And maybe the last, since I’ve talked about beauty and craft and how there are different ways of communicating craft—I talked about beer brands doing all these wild different beer things to be crafty, but it just got lost at some point. I’ve talked about this with a lot of brands who care about the idea of craft or quality in their brand. I always ask: are we fetishizing craft, or are we actually proving it? I always call it fetishizing craft because you aren’t actually doing the work to do it. You’re just talking it up. You’re using the language of it. You’re romanticizing it away rather than doing it authentically and genuinely. And it’s hard. It’s difficult to do craft in a way where you can actually see it and feel it. But it’s very easy to just talk up quality and craft, and as soon as anyone says they’re the best at everything, you’re like, that’s not the kind of quality and craft conversation we need to have.
[unclear], yes. So good. The hot dog. God, I feel like the Costco hot dogs have come up a couple of times in our streams now, and it’s been years since I’ve had a Costco hot dog. Maybe I need a Costco trip in my life soon. All right.