The noise of the scroll era

Endless scrolling is the rhythmic base of our time. The feed demands immediacy, volume, repetition. The catchy headline outweighs the solid argument; the shareable copy replaces the kind of reflection that moves, shakes, and challenges us to step out of our comfort zone.

In this atmosphere of distortion, communication turns into a loop: we publish to appear, not to converse. Like highways saturated with traffic, social networks are a continuous flow where any voice can be reduced to a fleeting spark.

For brands, the risk is obvious: becoming an echo. Repeating until they disappear. Underestimating their audiences. Minimizing them. Taking up space without meaning until they become mere background noise. Publishing without purpose, simply to satisfy the cadence imposed by the algorithm.

The counterpoint: Gen Z and the return of reading

And yet, in the midst of all that noise, an unexpected current opens the curtain. Generation Z — often labeled “digital natives” — is rewriting the place of reading. And they’re doing it through appropriation: book clubs blooming in cities, bookstores turning into social spaces, hashtags like BookTok moving millions of copies and, according to The Publishers Association (UK), rekindling a passion for reading among young people aged 16 to 25.

In contrast to the digital whirlwind, many of them choose the physical book as a refuge: an object that doesn’t scroll, that takes up space, that demands pause. As The Week notes, this generation looks for far more than information when they read. They look for community. Reading becomes a shared ritual, an act of staying present in a time designed to speed everything up.

Reading becomes a cultural trench. A conscious choice for depth in the face of the vertigo of the scroll.

The parallel with brands

What’s happening with reading is a perfect mirror of what’s happening with brands in the world of branding. Many have adopted the rhythm of the feed: they replicate, fill, and multiply messages without stopping to think about what they’re actually saying — and to whom. Noise masquerades as presence. “¡Ai, Ai, Ai!”

The growing adoption of AI tools like ChatGPT often leads brands to lose their personality. When there’s no human curation behind the scenes and everything gets reduced to a simple copy-paste, narratives become homogeneous and predictable: every day we see thousands of messages — from different brands — reproducing the same expressions, posting structures, and discursive styles. The spark fades, everything becomes monotonous, and audience interest inevitably drops.

The market demands immediacy — and at VEO, we know that. But we choose to first read the context and interpret the world around us, and then develop creative pieces that interact with it in a more genuine way. We design at scale and accelerate processes with the help of artificial intelligence, yes — but without losing the essence and the human spark. Because design, like reading, requires intention. And it always pushes us to ask ourselves:

• Why are we creating this?
• How do we want to tell it/show it?
• What conversation(s) do we want to open?

Manifesto against noise

Reading reminds us of something essential: thinking takes time. Creating with intention does too. That’s why, as a Branding Agency, our manifesto is direct and aims for much more than simple likes. We seek to build purposeful brands that make a difference. To hack the automated. To unplug the monotonous. To shake our heads in the middle of the mosh pit and declare:

That’s where the difference lies between replicating and meaning-making. And in that pause, in that depth, is where the true future of communication begins.