Not a single soul in the marketing department knows Somchai exists, and yet they have spent the last 45 minutes trying to sell him his own reflection. It is in a humid apartment in Bangkok, the kind of heat that sticks to the back of your neck even with the fan oscillating at its highest setting.
She is the “New User.” She is the aspirational ghost that haunts every entertainment platform from Silicon Valley to Southeast Asia.
Somchai is 55. He has been logged into this specific ecosystem for . He does not own a sun-drenched loft, and his relationship with his screen is not one of giddy discovery, but of quiet, rhythmic habit. He is the bedrock of the platform’s revenue, the silent majority that never appears in the quarterly PowerPoint presentations under the heading of “Brand Identity.”
The Geography of Disconnect
He is the user who stayed, and because he stayed, he has become invisible. There is a specific kind of polite betrayal in being a customer for over a decade and seeing the company you support pretend that your demographic doesn’t exist. It’s like being the spouse who keeps the house running while the other partner only posts photos of the attractive strangers they met at a sticktail party.
My friend Taylor J.P. understands this invisibility better than most. Taylor is a sunscreen formulator, a profession that requires a fanatical devotion to things that cannot be seen. He spends in a lab, obsessing over the “white cast” left by physical blockers like zinc oxide. He once told me that the greatest failure of a sunscreen is to be noticed. If you see the product, the formulator has failed.
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“If you see the product, the formulator has failed. Invisibility is the ultimate sign of efficacy.”
– Taylor J.P., Sunscreen Formulator
But Taylor, like Somchai, is also a man of long-held habits. He has used the same digital interfaces since , back when the internet still felt like a series of interconnected basements rather than a polished shopping mall.
Last year, Taylor and I were at a funeral for a mutual colleague. It was a somber, high-ceilinged affair where the silence was so thick you could almost taste the incense and old wood. At a pivotal moment, as the priest was descending the altar steps, he caught his foot on a loose rug and did a frantic, flapping little dance to keep his balance.
It wasn’t a fall, but it was undignified. And in that vacuum of holiness, I laughed. It wasn’t a giggle; it was a sharp, barking sound that echoed off the marble. The glare Taylor gave me was enough to melt the SPF 45 he surely had on his face.
But that laughter was a symptom of a disconnect-a moment where the expected reality and the actual reality collided so violently that the only response was a total breakdown of decorum. Marketing imagery is that funeral. It is a highly staged, somber, or joyful ceremony that demands we look a certain way. And the long-tenured user is the guy in the back row who knows exactly where the rugs are loose.
New User
Fleet interest, high novelty, zero history.
The Lifer
Shared history, muscle memory, steady revenue.
Worshipping at the Altar of New
We have reached a point where the “New User” is the only deity the entertainment industry worships. Every visual asset is designed to lure the uninitiated, the young, and the fleetingly interested. They want the person who will click once and disappear, rather than the person who has clicked every day for .
This focus on the “fresh” is a psychological trick we play on ourselves. We believe that if we show the 25-year-old in the loft, the 55-year-old in Bangkok will feel younger. But that’s not how loyalty works. Loyalty is built on the recognition of shared history.
When Somchai navigates to the gclub login page, he isn’t looking for a transformation. He isn’t looking to become the girl in the stock photo. He is looking for the stability of a system that has survived the rise and fall of five different tablet generations.
He is looking for the of operational history that the brand carries like a quiet badge of honor. He wants the reliability of a platform that doesn’t feel the need to reinvent its soul every time a new design trend emerges in San Francisco.
The Character in the Data
The data is always character-driven, if you know how to read it. If you look at the backend of any major entertainment hub, you’ll find the “Lifer.” This user typically has an account age that exceeds the tenure of 95 percent of the company’s current staff.
The financial anatomy of the “Lifer”-predictable, stable, and entirely absent from visual branding.
They have seen the UI changes of , the security overhauls of , and the Great Migration to mobile in . They have deposited exactly $55 on a Tuesday afternoon for a decade. They are the most valuable assets on the ledger, yet they are the least represented in the brand’s visual language.
Why do we fear the face of the veteran? There is a prevailing myth in creative circles that showing an older, established user suggests the platform is “dying” or “stagnant.” We equate youth with growth and age with decay. But in the world of online trust, the opposite is true.
Sun Damage and Consistent Glow
Taylor J.P. once explained to me that the skin’s memory is longer than our own. It remembers every 15-minute walk in the sun without protection from . Digital platforms are the same. They carry the “sun damage” of bad updates and broken promises. But they also carry the “glow” of consistent uptime and fair play.
The long-tenured user is the living proof that the protection held. They are the evidence that the system is fair, that the payouts happen, and that the community is real. I think back to that funeral laughter. I felt like an outsider because I saw the “glitch” in the ceremony.
Long-term users feel like outsiders in their own digital homes when the marketing reflects a world they don’t inhabit. If Somchai saw a photograph of a man his own age, perhaps with a slightly cluttered desk and a cup of lukewarm tea, he wouldn’t feel “old.” He would feel seen.
He would feel that his 15 years of loyalty weren’t just a row in a database, but a recognized part of the brand’s story. Marketing that disowns its actual customers performs a kind of polite betrayal. This betrayal has a cost.
Celebrating Endurance
When you only market to the “future” user, you tell the “current” user that their time is over. You tell them that you are waiting for them to leave so you can replace them with someone more photogenic. It is a strange strategy, considering it costs 15 times more to acquire a new customer than to keep an old one.
The relative cost multiplier for acquiring a new customer versus retaining a loyal veteran.
Yet, we spend 85 percent of the budget on the stranger and 5 percent on the friend. We need a visual honesty that reflects the actual weight of time. Imagine a campaign that celebrated the “Class of 2005.” Imagine seeing a user who has been through three marriages, four career changes, and two moves across the country, all while maintaining the same account.
That is not a story of stagnation; that is a story of endurance. In an era of disposable apps and three-second attention spans, a 15-year user is a miracle.
Taylor J.P. is currently working on a formula that uses a specific type of encapsulated mineral that only activates under high-stress heat. He’s obsessed with the idea of a product that “knows” when it’s needed most. Long-term users are the same.
They don’t need the bells and whistles. They don’t need the “New User” bonus or the neon flashing lights. They need the platform to work when the heat is on. They need to know that the infrastructure they’ve trusted for won’t buckle under the pressure of a trend.
The industries that learn to depict their real audience, including the audience that does not match the aspirational fantasy, will build trust that no campaign can manufacture. It requires a certain bravery to put a 55-year-old man in a humid room on the front page of your website. It requires you to admit that your product isn’t a magical portal to a loft in New York, but a reliable companion for a man in Bangkok.
The Foundation of Authenticity
Somchai closes the ad. He doesn’t think about the girl in the loft for more than a second. He logs in, his fingers moving with the muscle memory of a decade and a half. He knows where every button is, even the ones that have shifted slightly over the years.
He spends engaging with the interface, finds his small win for the night, and logs out. He is satisfied. He is loyal. He is the most important person in the room.
And tomorrow, the marketing team will buy another 25-year-old’s smile to put on the homepage, while Somchai continues to be the foundation they are too afraid to photograph. We are so busy trying to look like the future that we have forgotten how to honor the people who actually brought us here. We treat tenure like a secret when it should be a headline.
If we ever want to move past the superficiality of modern branding, we have to start by looking at the people who have already said “yes” for a thousand nights in a row. We have to realize that the “white cast” of marketing-the layer that hides the real skin of the user base-is exactly what’s keeping us from a deeper connection.
The beauty isn’t in the stock photo; it’s in the log files. It’s in the 15-year-old account that still logs in at , looking for a familiar place to land. Are we brave enough to show the face of the person who actually pays the bills? Or are we going to keep laughing at the funeral of our own authenticity, hoping nobody notices that the rugs are loose? The 55-year-old is waiting for an answer, even if he’s too busy playing to ask the question.