REPORT: Psychotechnology
When the outer world feels unpredictable, the real opportunity lies in reshaping how people think, feel, and measure meaning.
Brand strategy has been reduced to reaction.
We’ve replaced vision with vibes. We’ve mistaken trends for truths, and every trend demands an immediate response. AI, robotics, and ‘the algorithm’ mean signals are crossing everywhere and it’s making the future feel impossible to predict.
But it’s not technology that will decide the future.
It’s the hidden psychotechnologies of our world that will change everything.
I’ve written a new report on how to build a psychotechnology brand that wins when the outer world feels unpredictable.
Psychotechnology is the architecture of belief that shapes how we see the world. It’s the powerful ideas, concepts, and mental models that ultimately decide how everything plays out, even the most powerful technologies among us today. It is the container that holds it all.
When you play in psychotechnology, you play at a level that predicates everything else. The technology, the culture, and the market will all follow.
This 90-slide report is both the culmination and the next step of my strategic approach to branding:
In it, I explore the three most powerful psychotechnologies that you will need now and into the next few years.
Big Ideas: These reveal the values people unconsciously organize their lives around, and tell us where we can create new values that people will actually adopt. Big Ideas don’t stay in their lanes. They go broad across culture in unexpected ways, and the new big ideas that are emerging are especially provocative.
Market Conditioning: This shows how those values are normalized and scaled, and how to place your brand on the critical path while your competitors fall off. If you’re not bending the will of the market toward your brand, you’re paving the path of the market toward your competitor. Bending the market is an incredible ability - almost like a strategic magic trick - and you have to learn how to see it happening.
Units of Culture: My favorite signals, these expose the outdated frameworks still shaping our experiences, and the latent demand you can tap into with your brand. There have never been so many outdated units of culture at the same time, and there is a lot of value to be captured right now. People are literally waiting to live their lives differently.
Strategy is in a tough spot right now.
I get the sense everyone is grasping for something deeper, some system of insight that can cut through the noise. As brand leaders, we’re trained to find patterns, but in the chaos of the moment we’ve failed to update our own models for understanding the world and our markets.
This report is how I am building both my own brands and those of our clients with a different lens.
No matter how fast the world moves, no technology, no trend, and no tool can ever live outside the psychotechnology of its time.
That’s an exciting thing because psychotechnologies are powerful, and they announce their approach years and decades in advance.
This is where you can build your culture brand.
Living In Dreamland
Here's what we've been consuming.
Built for Disorder: The Next Era of Business (NOBL): “The next generation of companies won’t just make different choices—they’ll be built differently. They’ll be embedded locally, acting less like distant corporations and more like trusted neighbors. They’ll push authority to the edge, enabling real-time decisions. They’ll run on minimum viable bureaucracy—just enough structure to align, never enough to stall. They’ll favor redundancy and flexibility over efficiency—because resilience is the real advantage. These aren’t upgrades. They’re structural overhauls. And they’re what it takes to survive—and lead—in an era of disorder and distrust.”
The Whiff of AI Aesthetics: Dream Logic Episode 1 (Kirby Ferguson): “It’s the start of a weekly conversation: musings, artist interviews, and long looks into the strange, evolving landscape of new creative tools. In this episode, Karin reflects on the unexpected freedoms and failures of this medium, and what she's noticed among peers in the design world. What it makes possible. What it doesn’t. It’s an open invitation to think differently.”
The Houston Rodeo: The cultural moment no one is talking about (The Pollinatr): “The Houston Rodeo is becoming an epicenter for culture, fashion, food, and music. I love that it’s in a different city besides NY, LA, and SF. I love that so many different cultures are represented and take pride in this moment. As people are seeking more IRL experiences, this is an amazing opportunity for your brand to stand out that a lot of non-cowboy brands haven’t discovered yet.”
Models Aren't Moats: Three Signals Amongst the AI Noise (Digital Native): “Yes, ARR Is Dead, which unpacks how low-quality some of this AI revenue is. Annual Recurring Revenue is a beautiful thing because it’s recurring—it’s right there in the name!—and because it’s predictable, high-margin, and typically expands as customer adoption broadens. In the world of AI, though, much of the revenue is experimental. It’s not really recurring; it’s not really predictable; it’s lower-margin; and churn is way worse. So should we really be valuing companies on the same ARR multiples?”
Want to Sell More Romance Novels? First, Have a Really Great Hat (Inc.): “Don’t call it a publishing company. 831 Stories is selling romance as a concept […] Most of the time, merch tends to be an afterthought. There is no shortage of brands that stick their logo on T-shirts and tote bags and put them up for sale or gift to influencers hoping to get cheap exposure or squeeze extra revenue out of their IPs. The opposite is the case 831 Stories. New merch is introduced alongside and between book releases in two strategic categories—community-forward pieces that play into the evergreen romance tropes, and in-universe artifacts based on the unique elements of each 831 Stories book.”
An Obituary for Millennial Culture (VICE): “After all, millennials have nowhere to go. The internet is where they live […] One of the emergent qualities of the digital culture millennials shaped is that nothing ends any more. Wars and pandemics drag on; aging bands keep touring in a perpetual state of reunion rather than breaking up; politicians circle the drain into their eighties and nineties; bygone aesthetics and styles are forgotten and rediscovered in shorter and shorter cycles. We seem unable to fully metabolize experiences and move on, for better or worse; we suffer from cultural acid reflux.”
You’re looking for a method, a tactic, a framework, but ultimately, you are the tool.
I keep coming back to this.
Every month we host great minds for our strategist’s club – people like Rory Sutherland, the world’s #3 female poker player Maria Ho, famous mentalist Andy Nunn, breakthrough cognitive scientist Mark Miller, uncertainty expert Sam Conniff, Seth Godin, Zoe Scaman, Matt Klein, Nir Eyal – and their collective wisdom all comes back to the same thing.
It’s not about what you know. It’s about how you see.
These are different people, in different industries with different experiences, yet somehow again and again, they arrive at the same truth. We spend so much time searching for the right playbook or the perfect method that will help us unlock strategy, but no outside tool can really do that work for you.
The real work is on you.
You have to be able to control your biases, see yourself/ the market/ the world clearly and without blindspots, experience others' lives with empathy, to understand what patterns you default to, and to recognize when fear or folly is making your decisions for you. You’ll be better served by learning when to trust your instincts and when to challenge them than by any external organizing force.
That’s the unlock, and it’s not just about our work as strategists.
This applies to everything. It defines success, happiness, clarity. Whatever the thing is that you struggle with. The way you show up in relationships, the way you handle change, and the way you rebuild after setbacks. It’s how you’re able to balance conflicting truths without your identity feeling conflicted.
To me, it’s the difference between trying to solve life like it’s a problem versus learning how to play it so it’s a game you’re actually good at.
The answer isn’t out there and you will never find it outside of yourself.
The real secret isn’t finding the perfect system or tool. It’s sharpening your own senses so you can navigate any system effectively.
Yours,
I’m Jasmine Bina, and I’m a brand strategist and cultural futurist. If you love this newsletter and need more:
My private strategist’s club Exposure Therapy is where the best minds and brand builders come to get better at their craft. It’s also where I drop my best original research.
My brand strategy agency Concept Bureau works with some of the most powerful cultural brands in the world today.
My LinkedIn where I post my ideas almost every day, before they turn into reports or articles. I invite you to connect with me. I’d love to meet you!
Jasmine I loved this presentation! So interesting and totally in line with some of what I’ve been looking at. Thanks for sharing this ✨