The “Golden Age of BS” is over.
Marketing has lost its mind. It has retreated into a fantasy land where consumers want “relationships” with their mayonnaise and “deep engagement” with their insurance provider. Agencies sell you “Brand Love” and “Purpose” to soothe their own vanity, ignoring the cold, hard reality of how people actually buy.
We are T40 Associates. We are not “gurus.” We are Realists. We are Storytellers. And we operate on a different operating system: Commercial Cultural Engineering.
1. The Engineer: We Don’t Want “Fans.” We Want Mental Real Estate.
The industry says: “Build Brand Love and Loyalty.”
We say: Growth comes from Indifference.
Most people don’t care about your brand. They are busy. They are “cognitive misers” just trying to get through the day. They don’t want to love you; they want to find you easily.
We follow the laws of Marketing Science (Ehrenberg-Bass) and the psychology of Edward Bernays:
Penetration over Loyalty: You grow by getting new people to buy you once, not by begging “loyalists” to buy you twice.
Engineering Consent: We don’t just “tell stories.” We engineer Memory Structures. We use symbols and narratives to colonize the brain, ensuring that when the need arises (the trigger), buying you is an automatic reflex.
2. The Encoder: We Don’t Just “Design.” We Write the Code.
The industry says: “Differentiate with a Unique Selling Proposition.”
We say: Differentiation is a myth. Distinctiveness is money.
In a hyperreal world, functional differences are dead. Coke and Pepsi are functionally identical. As Jean Baudrillard taught us, we consume “Signs,” not products.
The Code: Your logo, your colours, your sound—these are not decorations. They are the Code. We manage these “Distinctive Brand Assets” to signal value instantly.
Sign-Value: We don’t bore consumers with “why we are better.” We use design to signal who we are (Status, Safety, Belonging) instantly. We create the Simulacrum that the consumer actually buys.
3. The Healer: We Don’t “Target.” We Listen.
The industry says: “Target the consumer with anxiety-inducing noise.”
We say: Sane Marketing facilitates “Being.”
Modern consumers are anxious and alienated. Erich Fromm called this the “Marketing Character”—the feeling of being a commodity. Most marketing exploits this, fueling the “Having Mode” of endless, empty consumption.
The Antidote: We stop shouting. We listen with intent.
Authentic Connection: We dig for the human story beneath the P&L. We help you articulate a value that cuts through the noise because it is real. We move your customer from the anxiety of “Having” to the satisfaction of “Being”.
4. The Accelerator: Do Less. Better.
The industry says: “More activity equals more productivity.”
We say: The enemy is the “Busy Fool.”
Agencies are addicted to “Reporting Theatre”—endless meetings, revisions, and admin that look like work but deliver zero value. They sell you motion; we sell you progress.
Our philosophy is simple: Do Less, Better.
“Less” means cutting the low-value execution that burns budget. “Better” means doubling down on the human craft—strategy, storytelling, taste, and leadership—that actually moves the needle.
We achieve this through a Human-in-the-Loop operating system:
The 80-10-10 Rule: We use AI to do 80% of grunt work (research, drafting, sorting). Humans provide the first 10% (Intent & Strategy) and the final 10% (Refinement & Polish).
From “Tourism” to Fluency: We don’t dabble with ChatGPT for “ideas.” We build Systems. We automate workflows so the machine handles the boring stuff while we sleep.
Solutions, Not Services: We don’t sell you hours on a timesheet. We sell you clarity and outcomes. We use RAG systems (your business brain on AI) to ensure every output is grounded in your reality, not generic fluff.
We don’t automate people out of work. We free them up to do their best work.
The Promise: Two Blokes. One Mission. No waste.
We are the antidote to the agency model.
No Fluff: We’d rather be clear than clever.
No Bloat: We reject “busy fool” work. We use systems to eliminate chaos so we can focus on the craft.
The Deal: Less chaos. Better thinking. Better execution. We listen. We create stuff. You sit back and focus on your business.
Simple. Human. Unbeatable.
On. Your. Team.
