Five months ago, in a conference room with fluorescent lights that made everyone look slightly ill, a strategist advanced to slide 42 and announced that a new yogurt would
“unlock the emotional potential of everyday life.”
No one laughed.
Laughter died in these rooms years ago.
They nodded, as people nod when they’ve surrendered to absurdity so thoroughly that resistance feels impolite.
There was a time when brands weren’t this deranged.
When emotion was not a commodity, and purpose wasn’t a performance metric.
Walk into a real agency then, not today’s sanitized labs of “alignment”, and the air carried the smell of human ambition: stale coffee, panic sweat, cigarette smoke, truth.
Emotion was something you fought through, not something you manufactured like a scented candle.
I remember briefings where a creative director would whisper, “Let’s not embarrass ourselves.”
Not “Let’s elevate humanity.”
Not “Let’s rewire culture.”
Just “Let’s not make trash.”
An objective so modest it’s revolutionary now.
But emotional inflation crept in the way rot always does quietly, then suddenly everywhere.
One brand declared it stood for “joy.”
Another insisted it stood for “belonging.”
Suddenly even cat litter had a mission statement.
Everything became profound.
Which means nothing was.
And here comes the bitter irony no spreadsheet will ever quantify:
We spent decades teaching brands to “speak with heart,”
and they responded by developing a clinical addiction to emotional steroids.
Now emotional inflation is the industry’s default operating system.
Purpose statements written like ransom notes to a god nobody worships.
Campaign scripts dripping with moral syrup so thick even the actors choke delivering the lines.
Manifestos filled with words like “courage,” “hope,” “unity,” “transcendence”,
all the emotional calories, none of the nutritional truth.
These brands were once dialects.
Nike spoke like a sweaty, manic prophet.
Apple seduced with the confidence of a quiet genius.
Ben & Jerry’s shouted like a protest march in a college town.
Patagonia spoke like a monk who could break your jaw.
Even the banks had an accent, cold, metallic, intimidating.
Now they all speak in the same inflated corporate Esperanto:
the voice of a self-help cult with a media budget.
Inside the holding companies, emotion has become a commodity traded like corn futures.
“Make it emotional,” they say.
What they mean is: “Make it manipulative.”
What they approve is: “Make it meaningless.”
And yes, soon enough some consultancy will resurrect this entire tragedy with a rebrand —
“EmotionOS,” “Authenticity Engine,” “Purpose 4D.”
Everyone will applaud because we love nostalgia as long as it’s packaged as innovation.
But the story is uglier than nostalgia.
Brands didn’t inflate emotion because culture demanded it.
They inflated it because inflation is cheaper than introspection.
Because sincerity requires courage, and courage is a trait modern corporations treat like contraband.
You can template empathy.
You can automate vulnerability.
You can A/B test the illusion of sincerity.
But you cannot counterfeit truth forever.
Even lies get tired.
The new emotional language has no weight, no shadow, no consequence.
It’s frictionless,
and frictionless emotion evaporates on contact.
Ask anyone under 40 what they feel when a brand announces it “stands for humanity,” and they’ll tell you: nothing.
Not cynicism,
numbness.
The body learns to shut down when it’s force-fed synthetic emotion day after day.
Meanwhile, the industry responsible for the inflation still preaches authenticity like a religion it abandoned decades ago.
The cosmic joke is simple:
the people who monetized emotion now can’t feel a damn thing.
We once built culture out of feeling.
Now we build merchandise out of feeling and call it culture.
Because the moment an industry forgets the gravity of its own words, it doesn’t just lose credibility,
it loses the language to speak.
And we, the ones who once trafficked in truth, now hawk the residue of truth.
The emotional fumes left after sincerity has burned off.
If your product can’t change the world, stop pretending your copy can.