The rise of the conversational style

A few weeks ago, Porsche revealed the latest iteration of the 911 GT3: one of the most desirable cars for petrolheads everywhere.

You might have expected a major launch event, alongside footage of the new car sliding sideways around tracks in beautiful locales across the world.

You’d be wrong.

There was a short obligatory video on the Porsche Youtube channel (in German) detailing the car’s spec, but the real launch happened on another Youtube channel, belonging to car journalist Chris Harris.

It’s a twenty minute unscripted video, in which Chris interviewed Andreas Preuninger, head of the Porsche GT programme.

They walked around the car, talked about what’s changed, what hasn’t, and reminisced a bit about the time they’d spent together since Chris started writing about cars.

That was it. That was the launch.

In pretty much other decade before this one, Chris would have gone to them: now they go to Chris.

It’s easy to paint this as another example of incumbents losing their traditional advantages, and so having to adapt.

In this case it’s distribution, but it’s easy to think of others.

Think of the cost of building a website: what now involves a few clicks on AWS or Vercel once involved buying your own servers, racks, and fans - and then going to work.

Or simply think of the reason Harris’ channel can exist right now: the fact that with just a couple of GoPros, a DJI mic, and a mate in another car to film - he can produce videos that look better than anything I watched on TV growing up.

But ultimately these changes are less about disadvantaging the incumbent, but more about letting new entrants play the game at their level.

In other words, they’ve allowed small companies to code themselves as larger companies, reaping the brand, trust, and user experience benefits.

However, I think - for the first time now - the incumbent really is at a disadvantage.

To understand why, it’s worth visiting another conversation, happening at exactly the same time Chris and Andreas were talking about the best way to close a door on a GT3 touring.

The Harriz-Walz team were considering whether to accept appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast.

The team decided against it.

The Trump team took the opposite approach, flooding the field, and going direct: from podcaster to podcaster (all pre-vetted by Donald Trump’s son).

And, if you’re going by results, you have to say it worked.

What’s really going on here is less about a change in technology, but a change in consumer tastes.

Away from the glossier, more formal styles that in traditional days would have exuded authority and expertise; and instead towards the conversational style.

This style rejects gloss, concision, and production values, in favour of authenticity and personality.

Out go perfectly clipped lines, and shareable content. In come 3hr+ conversations clutching a bud light.

Reality over perfection. Risk over caution. Closeness over distance.

When you think of this style, you naturally think of podcasts - hence the calls to define this election as the “podcast election” - but the truth is that this style is bigger, and older than that.

From the 00s onwards the best television products had figured out what people really wanted: more people.

Take Inside the NBA - the iconic half-time basketball show, which pairs up four talking heads (Ernie, Chuck, Shaq and Kenny) to ostensibly talk basketball.

Pretty early on the team behind it realised that what audiences really tuned in for was the relationship between the four principals.

Basketball was simply the jumping off point to let them talk about whatever they want - from a basketball player’s hairline, to the quality of the water in Galveston, Texas.

Or take the show that Chris Harris, until recently, presented: Top Gear.

Its breakout success again came when the team behind it realised that though it might have been ostensibly a car show, it was never actually about cars.

It was three people talking. About anything. The cars were just an excuse.

Then came the aforementioned podcasts, elevating this style to an art-form.

Take the UK’s most successful podcast export to date - the Rest is History - the only one that features regularly in the top 50 US podcasts.

Both presenters have been very open in the past that it was only when they threw off the strictures of radio, and the desire to have a perfectly clipped answer, in favour of the long, rambling answer, with plenty of diversions, that the podcast truly took off.

What last week’s election did, I think, was expose a truth that most have known for a long time: for a modern audience, it’s the conversational style that people want more than anything else.

There are obvious political implications to that - but - more importantly I think, implications to anyone who wants to sell anything.

Because at heart, the conversational style is one of the first big structural changes that doesn’t just elevate the startup, but disadvantages the incumbent.

That’s not to say that people from large companies can’t dominate in the world of the conversational style. In fact, the best ones do: think of Zuck’s interview with Lex, or everything Jensen Huang has said ever.

But it’s smaller companies that I think have the advantage here.

As Jen Abel always points out: at an early stage (at least when it comes to enterprise) people aren’t buying a product, they’re buying you.

You are the best messenger of your product, is a truth at the heart of modern company building, and one that founders have an inbuilt advantage when drawing upon.

It’s for this reason that, for founders, the ascent of conversationalism, and the end of polish, is a great opportunity.

It turns out authenticity and quality of storytelling genuinely does beat budget.

Because last week makes it clearer than ever that the future isn’t about polish and presentation. It’s about people.

People are the most interesting. They are. They always have been. They always will be.

Andreas as Porsche can do it. So can the next president of the United States. And, probably, whoever wins in 2028 will have done so as well.

So - if you’re building anything - it’s time to master the conversational style.

aled@ashore.io