I can’t believe how long it took me to turn you on. But now that I have, I can’t imagine life without you. Or at least television.

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For years, my dear subtitles, I’ve resisted you. I understood and respected your utility for the hearing impaired, of course. But to the rest of us—particularly prestige cable snobs like myself—you were merely a distraction. 

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You pulled our eyes away from carefully crafted visuals to read your tiny text. Your timing, always a beat ahead of the spoken dialogue, felt like a barrage of mini-spoilers that disrupted the flow of the story, scene after scene. You spoiled punchlines, undermined dramatic tension, and seemed to lean a bit too heavily on the phrase “indistinct chatter.”

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But recently, I’ve had a change of heart—and it hasn’t just evolved my consumption of television, it’s disrupted the way I think about the brands we create at The Indelible.

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I started to dabble with you, privately, in moments when the content seemed to demand your help. First, you helped me decipher the occasional unfamiliar accent. Without you, Derry Girls would have been incomprehensible, but in your company, it was pure joy. Later I leaned on you when sound mixes became and more “artistically” muddled. Looking at you, Chris Nolan.

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In time, I grew accustomed to your presence, even fell into a new rhythm with you. What once seemed like extra work began feeling like enhancement. And it turns out I wasn’t alone—you’re hardly the secret weapon I’d suspected. Recent studies have found a majority of viewers are now using you all the time, for a variety of reasons beyond hearing impairment.

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While I’d presumed you’d be most at home with older folks, in fact it’s the younger generation that’s embraced you most fully. They claim you help with multitasking, allowing them to keep one eye on their show and the other on their phone or laptop. Never mind that studies have shown this sort of split attention to be neurologically dubious at best—the perception persists.

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(I’m confident that the millennial in my household would concur with this view. I’ll ask her when she has a free second.)

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Some viewers even turn to you out of courtesy, enjoying their entertainment soundlessly without disturbing those around them. Anecdotally, this gesture of decorum remains regrettably behind the times on public transportation and in airports. But it’s on the rise.

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And still others have discovered an unexpected benefit to your presence: enhanced comprehension and retention. Turns out there's something about seeing and hearing the words simultaneously that helps the content stick—and the effect is especially profound among viewers watching material outside their native language. Who knew?

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Between hearing others sing your praises and experiencing my own journey alongside you, I began to see a broader lesson in our work building brands.

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As practitioners, we approach our work with specific intentions in mind, both strategic and artistic. We craft every element—the visual identity, the tone of voice, the customer experience—with a specific vision of how that brand should best be perceived and consumed.

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But like a filmmaker's vision, our brand work doesn't exist in a vacuum. Once it's out in the world, people inevitably find their own ways to engage with it, interpret it, and make it a part of their lives. Just as viewers have chosen to embrace your assistance—on their own terms and for their own reasons—audiences will do the same with the brands we dream up.

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So, dear subtitles, what can we as brand creators learn from your example? First and foremost, we must stay attuned to how people actually receive and process information today, not just how we might wish them to. In an age of constant distraction, we need to find creative ways to work within these new constraints—even take advantage of them at times.

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That might mean designing visual systems that prioritize instant recognizability, even at a glance. Maybe crafting messages that can be absorbed and understood in bite-sized pieces, rather than relying on sustained attention. It could even mean considering how our brands can be experienced with the sound off, so to speak—how they translate across different sensory modes and consumption contexts.

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More broadly, you’ve reminded us to stay humble and open to the unexpected ways our brands might be appropriated and reimagined. Just as cinematic auteurs have had to make peace with the rise of subtitles—however begrudgingly—we too must be willing to see our carefully crafted creations take on new meanings and uses in the hands of our audiences.

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Ultimately, subtitles, your lesson is one of adaptability, of meeting people where they are. You've shown us that the most resilient brands are not necessarily the ones that rigidly adhere to their original blueprint, but rather those that can evolve and find new relevance as the world changes.

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I hope you’ll accept my gratitude for this unexpected insight, and for all of your help. And please don’t go anywhere. We’ve got a bunch of new Targaryens to keep straight, and I can’t do it without you. 

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Indelibly yours,

Matt

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