Why Modern Marketing Has to Start With People

Over the past decade working inside technology companies, I've seen first-hand that the best marketing delivers for the customer. But I've also seen a persistent divide in how people think about doing that.

The old way said: ignore the data, make something brilliant, and the audience will follow. Then digital arrived with a fix  -  personalise at scale, build assets that convert, make the funnel work harder. One approach felt too lofty. The other felt too mechanical. And in both cases, the same question went unanswered: where is the customer in this conversation?

There is a third way and it starts with people.

The World Your Audience Is Living In

Before any of us can understand our audience, we need to understand the climate they are navigating every day. Because it is a lot.

Trust continues to decline. Edelman's most recent Trust Barometer recorded yet another decline in public confidence across institutions and brands alike. At the same time, AI-generated content is flooding every feed, making it harder for people to work out what is real and what isn’t.  The macro-economic squeeze has made all of us more deliberate about which brands we choose to spend our money with. And if a brand misses the mark, people are quick to tell us why. They will go online and express their opinions. 

The American Eagle and Sydney Sweeney campaign is a sharp reminder of that. The backlash revealed that it was not just a creative misstep but a deeper failure to understand how the audience wanted to be seen and spoken to. That gap between what a brand thinks it is saying and what people actually hear is where marketing can go wrong.

This is the environment modern marketers are working in. And it’s not a forgiving one.

What the Third Way Actually Demands

Winning over a discerning audience does not come from a single campaign or a clever tagline. It comes from consistency: in tone, in message, in advertising, in the actions a company takes and the values its leadership genuinely holds. Authenticity is not a mood board quality. It is built over time and felt immediately when it is absent.

But before you can be consistent, you have to know who you are talking to. Real, rigorous audience understanding. Not assumptions. Not personas built in a workshop and never revisited. Actual human insight, drawn from customer data, cultural observation and honest critical thinking to help you develop a powerful insight. 

A great insight meets three tests:

Brand truth: What is your genuine promise to the world?

Relatability: What does that promise mean specifically to your product and your category?

Actionability: Does it change a behaviour or meaningfully shape a marketing strategy?

These are not one-time questions. They are the ongoing work. Because right now, content is everywhere but meaning is scarce. The brands that will earn and keep trust are the ones prepared to do the harder thinking.

What This Looks Like in Practice

When I was at Square, we launched a campaign called "We Do The Square Stuff." Before I wrote the brief, we went back to basics: real customer conversations and an honest look at the data. What came back was not a feature list or a category claim. It was a human truth. Small business owners are not in it for the admin. They are in it for the thing they love — the food, the craft, the people, the idea they had at two in the morning that they somehow made real. 

So instead of leading with our product, we celebrated what our customers were brilliant at and quietly owned the part they would rather not think about.The insight passed all three tests: it was rooted in what Square genuinely does and spoke customer needs, it was immediately recognisable to anyone who has ever run a small business, and it gave us a clear creative and strategic direction that held across every channel.

That is the difference between marketing that represents people and marketing that merely targets them.

The Human Quality That Cannot Be Automated

There is a reason Taylor Swift has built one of the most loyal audiences in the world, and it is not algorithmic. She has written about real experiences in a voice that is unmistakably hers, for decades. If she asked AI to write her a song about a girl breaking up with a boy - would the music she has created reach the hearts of millions of young girls? Probably not. Heartache is unique to individuals and communicated in the most authentic way it connects. 

She has stood up for what she believes in, consistently, even when it was costly. Her fans do not just like her music. They trust her. That trust is the product of time, consistency and genuine human connection.

Brands can learn from that. I don’t mean to imitate her but I do admire her consistent commitment to releasing something that is real, true and always rooted in her fans. 

Audiences today want their intelligence respected. They want transparency. They want to feel seen, not followed around the internet by a pair of trousers they once glanced at. Mostly, they want a brand they can trust. These are not marketing requirements. They are human ones.

Where to go from here?

The good news is that audience-first thinking is available to any marketer willing to put in the work. 

There is a lot of noise out there, and there will only be more of it. But meaning is still scarce, and the brands that are willing to work for it, through genuine audience understanding, consistent values and the courage to represent people rather than just reach them,  are the ones with the best chance of standing out.

So be the brand you’d follow and get Authentic Marketing to help you stand out amongst the sea of sameness.