Last night, I was sleeping peacefully, mouth open, tongue hanging out… Hmm, was that detail really necessary? Yes.
Well, no. Actually, I was staring at the ceiling, thinking about this strange era where even bakers have to do personal branding on Instagram to sell a decent loaf of bread…
And then. Cosmic illumination. I finally knew what I wanted to do… slow com, like kneading a good dough by hand!
Yes. A totally revolutionary concept that consists of… calming down before publishing 14 useless posts about “the importance of authenticity”.
Because honestly, we live in a world where brands communicate so much they sound like Smurfs who swallowed three packs of Chokotoff, Chocobons or those big sour red candy laces I love, right before a Teams meeting. We post. We comment. We optimise. We “engage”. We “boost visibility”. We “work on our personal branding”. And mostly, we serve up a beautiful, steaming pile of marketing bullshit. Add a good fat dose of AI to that, and suddenly you’re live on air with a hammer turned into a cyclist doped on beta-carotene, selling you the benefits of raclette-cheese-flavoured condoms, extra resistant because they have three layers of red-and-yellow polka-dot latex.
But honestly, what does all that do to your brain? Applesauce? Mashed potato? Candy floss? A nice creamy soup of nonsense, that’s what.
The industrial-scale bullshit factory we call social media
Today, I can’t shake this growing feeling that communication on the internet, on social media, all that jazz… has turned into a casino.
No windows. Money everywhere. Bling-bling flashing in your face. And somehow, it drains us, weighs us down, lobotomises us a little too.
Does it reassure us? Maybe…
Alright, alright. I’m not going to sit here acting like some snobby little duchess spitting on business. I scroll too, without even knowing why anymore. I get stuck watching monumentally stupid things. I lose myself in the greasy little corridors of this money-making machine because it’s shiny, because it’s seductive.
And sometimes I buy the thing. Sometimes I fall for it like a naive little schoolgirl, which I absolutely am not anymore.
The tragedy of modern content
By trying so hard to please algorithms, follow trends and optimise KPIs, brands sometimes end up losing their voice. And that, woman, is tragic.
Because a brand without a voice is a bit like a singer without a mouth. Try singing “We Are the Champions” without one. Go on. I’ll wait.
Yeah. Pretty difficult, isn’t it?
Although with AI these days… alright Desmet, shut up.
So… what exactly is Slow Com?
Very good question, Jean-Michel.
You know Julien Kaibeck and his Slow Cosmetics bible? You know Carlo Petrini and the whole Slow Food movement? Well, this is kind of my version of that, but for communication.
I’m probably not the first person to think about it. Or maybe I am. Doesn’t matter. The intention is what counts.
The idea isn’t to disappear for six months into some fisherman’s cabin deep in the Ardennes and post artsy pictures of moss, pebbles and muddy Jesus sandals with a quote from your great-uncle underneath.
Like I said earlier, it’s about communicating with intention.
Creating. Le Petit Robert would define it as “making something that did not previously exist.”
Would we still dare to create something that doesn’t already exist? Something that sounds like someone. Something that tells a story. Something with a pulse. Something that wasn’t generated by a toaster overdosed on prompts.
I think we can. And honestly, I think we should all at least try.
Can we bring humans back?
I think we’re slowly reaching saturation point. But nobody cares what I think anyway. Opinions are a bit like reviews, right Manu? Manu says opinions can be shoved right up the…
Humans like texture. Depth. Humour. Imperfections. Sentences. Well… depending on the age group, maybe. Real ideas. Real personalities.
So maybe it’s time to come back to humans, isn’t it?
So there you go
Slow Com. A concept invented last night somewhere between insomnia and the snoring of the Scorpio sleeping next to me.
But honestly? I think we need it. This is communication from the future, man.