An essay on reality (why we do what we do).

Catch believes that the real world is the original media channel. Life and commerce has always happened here, it’s where we have always met, socialised, ate, shopped, learnt, worked, played, and everything in-between.

A digital facsimile of these things now happen online, generally funded by interruptive, broadly disliked, and questionably effective advertising media, that is positioned as adjacent, but is usually in fact the primary purpose of the platform’s existence.

For us, the advertising in the real world (we call it physical media) is different. This media is truly adjacent to the life that happens around it, it’s passive. It informs and persuades without disrupting. It doesn’t demand to be seen, it’s just… seen.

The important things in life will always happen in the real world, and as people become more ambivalent and fatigued by digital media, it’s real world counterpart will become ever more important for the economy.

There’s nothing new here, the world has always had media, from storefronts to billboards, but It’s very rare for this “traditional” media to derive any real meaning from the world it’s in, and the life happening around it. This is a stark contrast to its online counterparts which evolve at runtime.

Catch was founded on the belief that there is a new horizon of opportunity in ‘zooming out” on the context and meaning of the media we see in the physical world, to understand the flow of the life surrounding it, and transact more like other media channels, without succumbing to their pitfalls.

Our mission, to that end, is to standardise, codify, and connect the world’s physical media to its audience, where the audience is the primary stakeholder, and their benefit and experience is the primary design consideration.

In doing so, we can contextualise this media relative to the environment and life happening around it. We believe this is of circular benefit, and will be a critical vector in sustaining the physical commerce and services that help our communities and cities prosper, just like online media has sustained the internet and smartphone economy for decades.

If you think this is important, too, then join us in our mission, or just reach out for a chat.

Daniel Harkin
Co-Founder &
Chief Product Officer
daniel@catch.ad