Here comes Jimothy!
I recently read a great article from Tellagence about Jimothy – the internet's favorite raccoon whose story exploded online. You know you've seen him running around Seattle.
When Tellagence looked beneath the engagement, they found that a significant amount of the conversation was being amplified by bots and automated accounts. At first, that sounds like it diminishes the story, but I think it reveals something more interesting.
Engagement ≠ Attachment
We’ve used one as a proxy for the other for years. AI can manufacture content. Bots can manufacture activity. Algorithms can manufacture distribution. But none of those necessarily manufacture caring.
Hmm... 🤔
We didn’t care about Jimothy because he went viral.
The viral moment simply helped people discover something they found compelling.
Strip away the synthetic activity and something human rose to the surface: resilience, imperfection, humor, identity, shared experience. The internet was showing up for Jimothy.
That's where this gets interesting for brands
If engagement becomes easier to manufacture, maybe volume matters less than who stayed, why they stayed, and whether they come back. The dashboard can tell us someone reacted, but it can’t necessarily tell us someone cares.
Maybe AI doesn't threaten loyalty.
Maybe it exposes how poorly we've been measuring it.
| 𝗙𝗜𝗘𝗟𝗗 𝗡𝗢𝗧𝗘𝗦
𝘖𝘣𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘣𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴, 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱, 𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴.