Never The Same, Always Myself
Prada’s new campaign is uncannily close to something I wrote six years ago. But one important thing has changed.
Six years ago, while writing The Future of You, I was trying to describe a form of identity that was becoming more fluid, contextual and multiple, while still somehow remaining recognisably ours.
Then Prada put Zendaya in an ad and said:
Never the same, always myself.
The new Prada Paradoxe campaign stages something I was trying to capture in the book: continuity without fixity.
If you have already seen the ad you’ll know that Zendaya moves between roles, settings and versions of herself. Actress. Observer. Performer. Private person. Public image. The context keeps changing, but the claim remains: this is still me.
I found the campaign so interesting that I made an old skool video essay about it.
Never the Same, Always Myself: Zendaya and the Future of Identity
But there is one thing that has changed dramatically since I wrote the book.
The self is no longer only becoming more fluid. It is becoming more readable.
AI systems can increasingly construct versions of us from what we say, search, buy, watch and disclose - and, crucially, from what they then infer between those things.
We are moving from the designed self to the Database Self.
And something similar is happening on the other side of the relationship too.
For decades, brands carefully designed the version of themselves they wanted consumers to encounter: the identity, imagery, language and associations that would constitute the brand.
Now AI systems are increasingly constructing their own representation of a brand from everything they can retrieve, connect and infer about it.
Designed brand → Database Brand.
The consumer who once encountered that designed brand is increasingly becoming a database consumer too: interpreted through data, patterns and predictions rather than simply addressed as an audience.
Designed self → Database Self.
That changes the relationship between the two.
And a couple of weeks ago in Zurich, I delivered a keynote for the lovely Team Farner and IAA around exactly this shift.
The question for organisations is therefore becoming much bigger than:
How should we ensure our brand is visible/discoverable to AI?
The more important question is:
What is AI changing about people?
What is AI changing about brands?
Therefore what is the changed relationship between the two?
That is becoming an increasingly important part of my work with organisations.
If it is a question your organisation is starting to confront, get in touch.
For now, though, start with Zendaya, Prada Paradoxe and Identity.
Because occasionally advertising does something profoundly more interesting than selling us a product.
It shows us a version of ourselves just before we have quite found the language for it.
Watch: Never the Same, Always Myself: on Prada Paradoxe
And if you’d like more future-culture readings subscribe to my YouTube channel, Future of You. And look out for some major interviews there soon on Me:chine Dialogues.
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