Genuine effort trumps artificial intelligence? Ozempic & costly signaling.
June 11, 2025
By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative Director
Let’s say you received an invitation to a wedding by email or by text message three days before the event.
What would your reaction be?
You’d most possibly conclude that the bride and groom are not particularly invested in throwing a memorable, let alone lavish bash.
Either that or it’s a deliberate tactic to subtly convey to you that they are not really interested in your partaking of the merrymaking.
A week or so ago I attended an industry event in which one of the keynote speakers bragged about the fact that the PowerPoint deck he was presenting had been made with AI.
“I just prompted ChatGPT to do it for me and I went out to Starbucks.”
Unsurprisingly, the presentation was a trite litany of corporate tropes and lame clichés, poorly designed and dull as hell.
Was it really that bad?
Or was it just my impression after I was exposed to the fact that zero effort had been put into crafting it?
After all, the speaker is a successful mobile app developer (or so he claims).
See, due to deep-seated evolutionary traits, we have the tendency to like things that demanded effort and to dismiss the products of laziness.
Some behavioral scientists call it “costly signaling” or “effort signaling”.
The realm of dating and mate selection is awash with insights and examples of this phenomenon.
For instance: romanticism is “effort signaling”.
How far are you willing to go to propose to your gf?
What level of planning, ingenuity and expense will you put into popping the question?
Are you willing to expose yourself to ridicule or bodily harm?
How much disposable income did you invest in the engagement ring?
Obviously, the effort you put into the endeavor will be directly proportional to the willingness -and pressure- she will feel to say yes.
De Beers nailed it BIG with the brilliant yet totally arbitrary notion that an engagement ring must be worth three months of the groom’s salary*.
One of the winningest rules of thumb ever created by Madison Avenue.
A friend of mine bought his wife’s engagement ring online: she never forgave him; it’s the wound that keeps on bleeding.
Which leads us to Ozempic: what’s the value or attractiveness of being skinny if you obtained it, to paraphrase our commander in chief, through the fat man’s shot.
To be continued.
*When De Beers started using this rule of thumb on their ads, in the 1930s, it was only one month’s salary. Eventually, in the 80s, they upped it to two months. Now it’s three! You gotta love them shameless greedy bastards.
