Let's get real: Reality is today’s most valuable currency

My partner ran up to me the other day, all excited: “You have to listen to Lily Allen’s new album!” 

As I’ve never really been a Lily Allen fan, I suspiciously asked, “Is it any good?” “The music?" she replied. "Doesn’t matter. It’s the story behind it!” 

So I listened. 

In a world where AI can drop a full album before lunchtime, what drew millions of people toward this one wasn’t the sound, it was the real story behind it. 

It's not like an album, but more like a friend venting after a breakup. Written in just ten days, West End Girl tells the story of Lily’s breakup with Stranger Things’ David Harbour. Track-by-track she depicts how their relationship shifted from a conventional marriage into an "arrangement” with strict conditions, and how those conditions ended up being broken when someone named 'Madeline' appears in the lyrics:

🎼 We had an arrangement

Be discreet and don’t be blatant

There had to be payment

It had to be with strangers

But you’re not a stranger,

Madeline. 🎼 

Above: Lily Allen's recent album, West End Girl, was just one part of a living, breathing narrative.

It felt like binging a series, each song a new episode. But that's not all. The story kept unfolding in real life. The gossip, the interviews, the comments, it all blurred into one living, breathing narrative. And everyone had an opinion. In a world where AI can drop a full album before lunchtime, what drew millions of people toward this one wasn’t the sound, it was the real story behind it. 

Is real storytelling having a moment?

All of this made me wonder: is real storytelling having a moment? By the end of the year, half the internet could be AI-generated and, as machines learn from machines, the feed gets faker. But in between all that noise, we can see something bubbling up.

Reality shows have climbed 35% in viewership, overtaking fictional stories. Long gone are the days we used to talk about dragons and the Targaryens in the office kitchen. The new watercooler talk is now about who betrayed whom on The Traitors (which, by the way, had the biggest live audience in the UK in the whole of 2025). 

Or take Justin Bieber. After years of curating the perfect online self, he suddenly flips the script. Now he’s livestreaming all the time, 24/7,  giving us a peek into his real life. We see him tired, zoning out mid-sentence or talking shit. He’s decided to show a more real and less curated version of himself, and people love him again. 

Above: Apple TV's new logo was shot in-camera, something the brand has promoted. 

Or what about Fred Again, collaborating with Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso on their new song Beto’s Horns. Ca7riel posted stories of himself making weird mouth noises to explain the beat he wanted in the song to Fred Again..., and then that’s exactly what ends up in the song. Watching and feeling part of the creative process of this new single makes us love it even more. 

And brands are catching on. Apple TV’s new logo [above] wasn’t rendered in CGI, it was shot in-camera, made of actual glass. Everything was real, and it’s traveling on social media, because the process is the story. 

Do we double down on realness or jump into the wave of fakeness? 

At DUDE, we hit this head-on when launching Puma’s Premier League sponsorship. We wanted to do something spectacular, score the biggest goal ever using Tower Bridge as the goalpost. But here’s the thing: the internet was drowning in 'fake OOH' stunts, and even if we did it for real, would anyone believe it was real? 

So, we doubled down on proving the reality. We documented every part of the process; content creators documented the behind-the-scenes, showing our gigantic ball being inflated and transported. The story became real, and that’s what made people care.