‘Look’, he said, ‘I’d like you to produce a stand-out piece of creative work here. But if you can’t, what I’d like you to do is write them a really nice one-page letter – and we’ll send it out by FedEx.’ Steve was effectively describing what biologists call ‘costly signalling theory’, the fact that the meaning and significance attached to a something is in direct proportion to the expense with which it is communicated.
