Written to be forwarded

In most of the households I know there is an aunt who decides what the family sees.

She is in the group with forty people in it, the one with the cousins in Riyadh and the cousins in Cairo and the uncle who only sends prayers. Something reaches her, an offer, a menu, a video of a new place, a voice note from a friend about a doctor, and she makes a decision in about two seconds. Forward, or not.

The unit of attention here is the forward, and no report counts it.

An impression is something a platform sells to a brand. A forward is something a person gives to their family, with their name on it, at a cost to themselves if it turns out to be rubbish. The aunt spends a little of her standing in the household every time she presses the arrow, which is why she forwards so little of what she is sent.

Most copy could not survive that trip. It is too long for a screen held at arm's length in a kitchen. It sounds like a company rather than a person. It asks for something before it gives anything. It is in an Arabic nobody in that group speaks, or in an English that reads as a brand talking to itself.

What survives is short. It is sincere, which is hard to fake, because the aunt has read ten thousand of these and can smell a campaign. It gives something: a price worth knowing, a place worth trying, a thing worth saving. And it is in the Arabic of the people in the group, not the Arabic on the billboard.

The impression was bought. The forward has to be earned, and only one of them is a recommendation.