Be Nice. Make Money.

The commercial case for giving a shit.

If I could have any job title in the world, it would be Chief Compliments Officer.

I’m not joking. I think about this a lot.

An actual, salaried, C-suite role where your entire job is to notice people, say the thing they need to hear, and make the room feel different when you walk into it.

I’d be absolutely brilliant at it. I’ve been doing it unpaid for decades.

So when Marks & Spencer gave Gillian Anderson the title of Chief Compliments Officer - with an actual campaign about championing the power of everyday praise - I did two things.

First, I felt seen.

Second, I felt robbed.

But M&S didn’t do this because someone in their marketing team read a nice quote on a mug. They did it because kindness is having a commercial moment. And the science behind it is far sharper than most brands realise.

The warm, fuzzy feeling has a name. And it changes behaviour.

That chest-tightening glow you get when you see someone do something unexpectedly kind? It’s called moral elevation.

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt describes it as a mental reset button. It wipes out cynicism and replaces it with hope, optimism, and the urge to do something good yourself.

Not a metaphor. A documented neurological shift.

Research from UCLA’s Bedari Kindness Institute (love that there is an actual Kindness Institute!) and UC San Diego confirms that kindness spreads through social networks like a virus. When you witness an act of kindness, you become measurably more likely to be kind yourself, not just to the person involved, but to complete strangers.

The effect cascades up to three degrees of separation. You help someone. They help someone else. That person helps another. One act of generosity can influence dozens of people, none of whom planned it.

This is not soft science. This is behavioural contagion with commercial implications.

This always happens after a crisis. We’re in one now.

Kindness surges when the world falls apart. It’s a pattern so reliable you could set your watch by it.

After 9/11, volunteering spiked. After Hurricane Katrina, mutual aid networks spontaneously formed when government response failed. After the 2008 financial crash, charitable giving, community cooperation, and public meeting attendance all rose sharply - even in the areas most devastated by the recession.

During Argentina’s economic collapse in the early 2000s, workers collectively ran abandoned factories. Community kitchens fed whoever turned up. Parallel economies built on solidarity emerged from the wreckage of the ones built on greed.

The pattern is clear: when systems fail and trust fractures, people instinctively turn to each other. Kindness becomes survival. And then it becomes identity - a way of signalling “I’m not like the forces that broke this.”

Sound familiar?

We’ve just had five years of pandemic, political fracture, Brext=it, economic instability, algorithmic toxicity, and the creeping sense that nobody with any power has our backs. Cynicism has calcified. Doomscrolling is a reflex. Trust in institutions is at historic lows.

And into that environment, something unexpected is happening.

Small, visible, emotionally legible acts of kindness are cutting through the noise. Not despite the cynicism. Because of it.

Last weekend I marched with half a million people. And for the first time in months, I felt hope. Not the filtered, curated, algorithm-approved kind. The real kind. The kind you feel when strangers become friends. When a DJ turns a protest into a party. When a woman dancing next to you says: “When we’re gone, we’ll live in a box. So don’t live in one now.”

Hate is loud. It dominates the headlines. It wants you to believe it’s winning.

But hope isn’t losing. It’s just quieter. And it needs us to share it.

You can be rich and an arse. But what if you were rich and really nice?

We already know that being powerful and unpleasant is commercially viable. We have extensive evidence.

Elon Musk has built a quarter-trillion-dollar empire while being, by most accounts, absolutely dreadful to work with and increasingly difficult to watch online. The man bought an entire social media platform and the general consensus is that he made it worse on purpose.

So we’ve established the baseline: you can accumulate extraordinary wealth and influence while treating people like they’re disposable. Noted. Filed. Moving on.

But here’s the question nobody seems to be asking: if arrogance and antagonism can build empires, what could genuine, structural kindness build?

Because the evidence is starting to come in. And it turns out, the kind ones aren’t just winning hearts. They’re winning commercially.

The brands, artists, and creators who get it

Taylor Swift distributed an estimated $197 million in bonuses to her Eras Tour crew. $100,000 per truck driver. Big bonuses to dancers and techs. All delivered with handwritten notes.

She didn’t announce it. The crew did. Because when someone treats you that well, you can’t help but tell people.

The Eras Tour became the highest-grossing concert tour in history. Over $2 billion in revenue. She made everyone who worked on it feel like a partner, not a supplier. That’s not charity. That’s a masterclass in loyalty economics.

Olivia Dean is 26 years old. In February 2026, she walked onto the BRITs stage and walked off with four awards. Three weeks earlier she’d picked up Best New Artist at the Grammys.

In 2023, she performed to four people. Not four hundred. Four.

The distance between those two moments is not luck and it’s not a TikTok hack. It’s a van.

During lockdown, at nineteen, with no audience to speak of, she built a little trailer stage, stuck it in a van, and drove around the country playing to whoever would have her. One stop was on the cliffs of Cornwall, warming up for Fisherman’s Friends at a drive-in. Jo Whiley was in the audience and started championing her on Radio 2.

Her second album is called The Art of Loving. Not winning. Loving.

In a world addicted to irony, she chose sincerity. Chanel signed her in 2020 before she even had a debut album. Burberry and Cartier followed. Manchester renamed Deansgate station to Olivia Deansgate.

You don’t get that by being the loudest. You get it by being the most loved.

Fred Again shares pub details so solo gig-goers can meet up before shows. Think about that for a second. A musician designing his fan experience around loneliness. Not selling VIP upgrades. Designing connection.

DJ AG takes his DJ sets to care homes and streets, describing it as the most rewarding part of his work. He’s not doing it for a viral moment. It’s a core part of who he is. He’s choosing visibility for people who are usually invisible.

Ed Sheeran quietly gives around £1 million at a time to his old school, funds expressive arts programmes, sends food to exhausted A&E staff, and backs free meal programmes for kids. Small, local, ongoing. He’s one of the best-selling artists in history and his relationship with his hometown of Framlingham hasn’t changed.

George Michael spent his entire life anonymously donating millions, volunteering at homeless shelters, funding IVF for strangers, tipping bar workers thousands to clear their debts. Acts so private that fans only learned about them after he died.

No PR strategy. No brand positioning. Just a man who gave a shit and didn’t need anyone to see it. His legacy isn’t just the music. It’s the person. And that person is more beloved now than ever.

These aren’t stunts. They’re human-scale acts designed to be felt, not just seen. And they spread because they trigger moral elevation in audiences. We see them. Something shifts. And suddenly we’re a little more likely to act kindly ourselves.

That’s not fluffy. That’s a growth engine.

Why kindness works (the science in three moves)

1. Social contagion.

Kindness spreads through networks faster and further than you’d expect. One person’s generosity influences dozens of others, and witnessing it makes people measurably more cooperative. Brands that build kindness into their behaviour aren’t just doing good – they’re activating a psychological cascade that travels far beyond the original act.

2. Moral elevation as a reset button.

In a climate of exhaustion and cynicism, witnessing kindness gives people a neurological and emotional reset. Despair out, hope in. Brands that create moments of moral elevation aren’t just getting attention. They’re changing how audiences feel about being human. That’s a different category of brand relationship.

3. The warm glow effect.

Research on viral altruism - the Ice Bucket Challenge being the textbook case - shows people are drawn to join a visible social consensus around doing good. They crave the warm glow of compassion performed publicly. Kindness campaigns work because they give people permission to be kind in the open, and that visibility accelerates the spread.

The risk: viral kindness has a shelf life

One warning, because I’m not going to pretend this is all glitter and no grit.

Analysis of the Ice Bucket Challenge showed a clear pattern: once a cause hits a viral tipping point, public interest dissipates fast and engagement reverts to pre-campaign levels. Researchers call this the short half-life of viral altruism. It spreads like wildfire, but it rarely sustains.

Historical data backs this up. After the 2008 recession, kindness indicators - volunteering, giving, community participation - spiked between 2008 and 2009, then declined steadily from 2010 to 2015 as life stabilised. Kindness movements have an expiry date if they’re not maintained.

The implication for brands is blunt: kindness can’t be a one-off campaign. It has to be embedded in behaviour, repeated over time, and rooted in genuine culture change. Not hashtagged into a brief and forgotten by Q3.

Structural, not performative. That’s the line between brands that earn trust and brands that borrow attention.

So what should you actually do?

1. Design elevation moments into your experience. Moral elevation can be triggered by small, specific acts. A handwritten note. A genuine thank-you that isn’t a template. A public shout-out to someone who went above and beyond. M&S built an entire campaign around compliments. You don’t need Gillian Anderson. You need intention.

2. Make kindness visible and repeatable, not one-off. Build it into your operating rhythm. A monthly spotlight on unseen work. A standing offer that signals generosity. The brands winning with kindness do it again and again until it’s just how they operate.

3. Tell the stories. Moral elevation only works if people witness it. George Michael’s kindness didn’t spread until after he died because nobody saw it. You don’t need to be performative, but you do need to be visible. Share what you’re doing. Share why. The cascade depends on the seeing.

4. Audit for unkindness. Look at every touchpoint: your onboarding, your invoicing, your complaint process, your social media replies. Where does your brand feel cold, transactional, or indifferent? Those are leaks. Every unkind touchpoint undermines the kind ones.

5. Hire for it. Promote for it. Reward for it. If kindness isn’t in your hiring criteria, your performance reviews, or your promotion decisions, it’s not structural. It’s decorative.

My bet: kindness as differentiation

I think kindness is here to stay. Not as a universal vibe. Not as a trend cycle. But as a genuine point of differentiation for brands, artists, and creators who actually mean it.

We’ve already proved you can build empires while being unkind. The Elon Musks of the world have demonstrated, comprehensively, that you don’t need to be liked to be successful.

But I think that model is starting to crack. The backlash is building. The reputation costs are rising. And a growing number of people - consumers, employees, investors - are actively choosing to spend their time, money, and energy with people and brands that don’t make them feel worse about being alive.

In a world where AI can generate content, products, campaigns, and experiences at scale, the thing that cannot be automated is how you make people feel.

Kindness - real, repeated, specific, human-scale kindness - is the ultimate signal that there’s a person behind the brand who actually gives a shit.

Taylor Swift didn’t just fill stadiums. She built an economy.

Olivia Dean didn’t just win awards. She made Chanel, Burberry, and Adidas all decide she was the face of modern Britain - before she had a Number 1.

Ed Sheeran didn’t just sell records. He made Framlingham love him back.

George Michael didn’t just make music. He made people kinder, and they didn’t even know it until he was gone.

The brands and artists who win in the next five years won’t just say they care. They’ll demonstrate it in ways that trigger moral elevation, spread through social contagion, and reset audiences’ sense of what’s possible.

They’ll create Chief Compliments Officers. (Hire me. I’m available. I’d be sensational.)

They’ll share tour profits with truck drivers.

They’ll drive vans to Cornwall.

They’ll text solo fans with pub details.

They’ll donate to their old schools, quietly, repeatedly

By the way… YOU LOOK WONDERFUL TODAY 🪩

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