Louder has stopped working

A woman in Jumeirah runs a small online shop selling linen bedsheets. Sales are slow, so she does what everyone around her recommends.

She posts more often. Then twice a day. She pays to boost another round of posts, and another. She puts a red discount banner across every photo, messages people who once asked a question and never bought, and asks friends to send the page to anyone they know. Every week there is more of her in more feeds.

Every week the results look about the same.

This is the trap of turning up the volume. Over the past few decades the amount of promotion aimed at each of us has grown enormously. The share of promoted things that actually succeed has barely moved. The extra noise cancels itself out, and along the way it uses up the patience of the very people it hopes to reach. Each unwanted message spends a little trust that is hard to earn back.

What does move is quieter. A customer who sleeps better on those sheets tells her sister, and sends the link to a friend who has just moved house. That is not an advert, even though it does an advert's job. It is one person being generous to another with something they liked. Nobody mutes it or scrolls past it.

The work that produces that moment is not in the posting schedule. It is in the stitching, the weight of the fabric, the note in the parcel, the way a problem with an order gets handled.

When the people you serve do the telling, you no longer need to shout.

A better product travels further than a louder one.