The Cold Take: August

Welcome back to The Cold Take, the round-up where I strip away the panic and bloated headlines to look at what really happened in marketing this month. No sensationalism, no sizzling hot takes, and definitely no “TV is dead” obituaries for the fiftieth time this year. Now, there has been plenty going on this month, as always, and thankfully I follow a lot of marketers on LinkedIn who get riled up far too easily, forever providing me with free content. But I have decided to focus on two subjects in particular: T Swifty and the latest wave of “TV is dead” headlines. If you came here hoping for a dissection of the Cracker Barrel saga, you are out of luck. Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.

Taylor Swift gets engaged

Taylor Swift’s engagement to Travis Kelce triggered exactly what you would expect. Brands rushed onto social feeds, punning on “engagement” and trying desperately to ride the cultural wave. We saw a similar frenzy only a few weeks ago with the release of her The Life of a Showgirl album, when timelines were flooded with orange-tinted riffs. Nothing original and all instantly forgettable.

When companies behaved like companies, it was the outliers that caught the eye. Think back to Innocent in its early days, a smoothie brand that managed to feel human and singular in tone. When brands first began replying to comments on Instagram it felt novel, almost surreal, as if you were chatting with a celebrity. That kind of interaction once set a company apart. Now it is the norm and, in truth, it has become irritating. Every brand looks and sounds the same, as if they are all being run by the same twenty-one-year-old Canva marketing girly. The uniformity flattens personality and drains distinction.

This loss of personality matters. Ipsos research found that a strong brand tone of voice can lift brand equity by as much as a third. Kantar’s data shows that brands with high cultural relevance grow six times faster than those without it. Yet four out of five reactive posts around cultural “moments” create no measurable uplift at all. So why do brands persist in piling on? Because the short-term lure of likes and retweets feels easier than the long-term effort of building equity, and it looks good on a board report being read by people that don’t understand marketing success.

Kantar’s Jane Ostler captured the dynamic perfectly when she highlighted the difference between wit and wisecracking. Wit connects back to truth, strategy and brand personality. Wisecracking is simply verbal gymnastics. The difference matters more than most brands seem willing to admit.

Swift’s cultural weight is undeniable. Her Eras Tour brought in more than a billion dollars in ticket sales and she continues to shift consumer behaviour wherever she goes. But unless your brand has a meaningful reason to join the conversation, you’re not even borrowing her spotlight, you’re lost in the crowd all clutching onto their labubus and slurping from the same matcha latte. That can generate short-term attention, but it does not build anything durable. The lesson is simple: bandwagons are temporary, positioning is permanent.

YouTube overtakes ITV

Ofcom’s latest report shows YouTube has become the UK’s second most-watched media destination, behind only the BBC. This triggered the inevitable headlines declaring that television is finished, headlines that we have been seeing for more than a decade now. Yet the truth, as ever, is more nuanced.

Comparing YouTube directly with ITV is a false equivalence. YouTube is a vast platform of channels and creators, a whole ecosystem rather than a single outlet. To compare it with a lone broadcaster is like comparing the internet to The Times. Yes, live television audiences are shrinking, particularly among those aged 16 to 24, who now average only 17 minutes a day. But broadcast TV still accounts for more than half of in-home viewing. And for major cultural moments — Gavin and Stacey’s finale, a Wallace and Gromit Christmas special, or a Euros final — television remains the dominant gathering point.

The numbers tell a story that is more balanced than the death notices suggest. Broadcast TV still claims an average of two hours and twenty-four minutes of daily viewing. Gavin and Stacey’s finale attracted 18.6 million viewers, while Netflix’s Adolescence managed 12.2 million earlier this year, and YouTube usage among older adults has doubled in only two years. What this shows is not extinction but fragmentation. The audience is spreading, not vanishing.

YouTube’s rise is extraordinary and it now sits firmly in the mainstream. But institutions like the BBC and ITV remain cultural anchors. For marketers, the question is not whether to choose TV or YouTube. The smarter approach is to recognise the role both play and plan accordingly, weighing investments in proportion to the audiences they reach and the contexts in which they matter most.

Perspective

If there is a theme that runs through these two stories, it is the importance of proportion. Swift’s engagement illustrates how brands inflate cultural moments in a scramble to appear relevant. The YouTube headlines show how quickly journalists default to “death of” narratives, even when the data points to something more balanced and enduring.

Marketing is not about latching onto the loudest story of the week. It is about understanding what truly contributes to growth and brand equity. Context matters, measurement matters, and above all strategy matters. That is why proportion, patience and perspective are the traits worth cultivating. They are far less glamorous than a viral meme or a reactive tweet, but they are what build brands that last longer than a single news cycle.