Be More Octopus

As I have momentarily given up on working out what makes us unique among the animals (your theories welcome). For now, be more octopus. I promise, you won't go wrong.

When I sat down to write about "be more human" for MAD//Fest's 2026 theme, I hit several walls.

My initial bias was to reach for intuition. Intuition is one of the few areas where humans still have an edge over machines, as long as we don't confuse it with predictive modeling. Yet animals beat most of us at it, ten to one.

So I started looking into other classically "human" characteristics like empathy and different forms of intelligence, and annoyingly talented animals kept popping up. Bees and birds fly away anticipating natural disasters. Elephants mourn their dead. Dogs read our moods before we know we have them. Crows hold grudges (the least flattering item on this list of supposedly human traits). Kea, the alpine parrots of New Zealand, even solve multi-step puzzles and open rubbish bins for sport. I was doomed.

It was becoming clear that perhaps we had spent centuries training ourselves out of the instincts other species kept. But this is a rant for another time.

The most interesting wall I hit was this: even if we could define what makes us human, "be more human" assumes the human is the goal. But the human, at this moment in history, is overwhelmed, overstimulated, distracted, and outsourcing more of her thinking to machines by the week. (LINK: See: my last piece, where my ten year old caught me using Maps to go somewhere I already knew how to get to.) Aspiring to be a better version of that might require going back to the animal kingdom for inspiration. They are still not as affected by screens.

My inspiration had eight arms.

Why the Octopus

The octopus has nine brains. One central, eight distributed in its arms. Each arm can taste, touch, problem solve, and act somewhat independently, while the central brain coordinates the bigger picture. It changes colour and texture in real time to adapt to its environment. It learns by observing, opens jars, escapes enclosures, recognises individual humans, and seems to enjoy a good prank.

Crucially, the octopus is a distributed mind. Each part acts without waiting for permission, but the whole still moves as one. Autonomy at the edge, coordinated at the centre. 

Now re-read that with your organisation in mind.

How quickly decisions can be made at the edge without losing the coherence of the brand will make the difference. Centralised intelligence is too slow whilst pure decentralisation is too chaotic. The octopus is a very valid third option.

A small note in fairness: I thought I had an original idea with this newsletter title. Then I discovered AI and the Octopus Organization by Jonathan Brill and Stephen Wunker, published late last year, which makes the same case for AI-era organisations with substantially more rigour than I am about to manage in this newsletter. Good ideas surface in several places at once. The result? I am halfway through it now, alongside two other half-read books on my bedside table. So much for being more octopus. I am clearly still a hamster, with cheeks bulging from books I cannot stop collecting.

The Brand That Is Already More Octopus Than You Are

Octopus Energy overtook British Gas in 2024, ending three decades of unchallenged dominance, to become the UK's largest energy supplier as of 2026. 14 million accounts. Which? has named it a Recommended Provider eight years running, the only energy company ever to achieve this.

The interesting thing is not the growth but how it happened.

Founder Greg Jackson tells a story about a customer who could not afford to heat her house, so the company sent her a heated blanket. You have probably heard this one, as they, rightly so, have made very good tam tam of it. But the point is not the blanket. The point is that the company asked the right question. Not "how do we subsidise your bill" but "how do we keep you warm." Distributed intelligence in action. Whether it came from a frontline agent or the founder himself almost does not matter, as someone in the business was close enough to the customer to see the real problem, and the company was structured to act on it.

A brand strategy disguised as a customer service decision, which is an under-leveraged part of brand craft, if you ask me. Walking the walk, as they say.

Is Octopus boring? 

A senior marketer I was brainstorming with about Octopus told me he thought their advertising was a bit boring. I don’t agree. But as Mark Ritson has been reminding us, it is internal teams who get bored of their own ads long before customers do. Customers are absolutely fine with memorable, to-the-point messaging that does not need to wow. It just needs to earn its attention through what gets tangibly delivered as value. Octopus Energy has found its fun in transparent, contextually relevant, adaptive service. Where loyalty lives.

On a more provocative note, they are also one of a handful of companies with a CPMO, Chief Product and Marketing Officer. A role I have been advocating for years as the right shape for modern business. Marketing and product under the same lead, both serving the same boss: the customer. Rebecca Dibb-Simkin has held that role for over nine years, which in a senior employment market that chews through C-suite talent like popcorn is a story in itself. A boring one? Not at all. The kind of tenure that comes from knowing the grass is rarely greener on either side, and a cultural fit strong enough to survive the inevitable ups and downs of company growth. At that level, talent alone is rarely enough to keep you in place.

How to Be More Octopus

Bosses and Boards, make the organisation you serve more octopus by:

1. Move budget to customer service. The agent on the phone is your most important brand asset. Fund her accordingly.
2. Push authority to the edge. Decide what frontline staff can do without asking. Make it more than you are currently comfortable with.
3. Use AI to amplify the human, not replace her. Wherever you are about to remove a person, ask first whether you could amplify her instead.
4. Collapse the brand-product distinction. Stop briefing campaigns about who you are. Engineer experiences that prove it. And tell the outcomes. 
5. Treat trust as infrastructure, not a tagline. Build it into the decisions no one sees, not just the ones you publish.
6. Find a great CPMO and give them a chance to succeed. If you can’t make sure your CMO and CPO truly like each other, work as one, and incentives are aligned.

And if you want to get a head start yourself, you won't need to grow tentacles. Just:

1. Pay attention to what you notice as well as to what you are told. Your instinct picks up signals before your data does. Learn to consider them.
2. Read outside your category. Inspiration usually comes from someone else's work.
3. Make decisions at your edge. Whatever you can decide without escalating, decide. Most things did not need to be escalated.
4. Stop performing your job and start doing it. Octopuses do not look busy, they are busy. The difference is substantial.
5. Be useful at the edge of someone else's problem. Help the colleague closest to the customer. Their proximity is your strategy.

6. Stop apologising for trusting your gut. The phrase "I know this sounds unscientific but..." is costing you. Join me and I will give you all the ammunition needed to drop it this year.

Octopus or Ostrich. Which one will you be?

Be more human is the slogan most brands will reach for in 2026.

Be more octopus is the operating model to adopt.

Being an ostrich is what some days feel like doing.

But as my grandmother used to say: head deep in sand leaves your arse exposed.

Your choice.