Advisors: Your Humanity is Your Greatest Asset for Marketing Your Business
I’ve been noticing something strange (and good) lately, and I’m curious if you’ve seen it, too.
As marketing and tech thought leaders continue to push us down the “digital is everything, AI is the future, tech will solve all” path, it seems that “normal” people are starting to tune them out more and more. They are looking around and either realizing that tech can’t solve everything, or that they don’t want tech to solve everything.
They don’t like wondering if they’re talking to a person or a robot. They don’t like trying to figure out if your latest email was written by you or Chat-GPT. They don’t like the “great same-ning,” where everything is created using AI so everything looks and sounds the same.
Humans like humans. We like creative new ideas. We like genuine, heartfelt communication. We like unique observations about familiar things that make us see something in a new light. These human things tend to make a lasting impression on us.
Tech is a great tool, but it can’t do any of those things. It is ephemeral. It is incapable of creating lasting impressions.
Only live experiences can do that. Sitting down with your advisor for a meeting. Showing up for an event hosted at your advisor’s office. Having your advisor show up to an event of your own.
When you show that you’re on the side of humanity, you win.
Remember how grossed out people were by that Apple ad earlier this year where they crushed a bunch of evidence of human effort and compiled it all into an iPad? I still can’t believe they expected anyone to cheer for such an image.
(Here’s the ad I’m talking about:)
And then there’s Google’s latest Gemini-related gaff with the commercial featuring a dad asking Gemini to write a letter for his daughter (people seriously hate this thing):
The sheer gall of these ads reminds me of a recent Ted Gioia article, where he said:
“A large percentage of these tech leaders appear to be socially inept, and disconnected from the people around them. They are the last folks on the planet you would trust with reinventing society.”
And yet, marketing & tech people (or “martech” if you like) want you to jump into the bobsled so they can push you down the tech track even though they have no idea if it’s safe.
If you feel a little uneasy about getting in the bobsled, you should.
You might wonder why I would say this when a large part of what we do at Clay Pigeon centers around publishing content online. I confess, I’m a digital marketer. I am prone to getting lost in metrics and keyword research.
But I also see the futility of a lot of digital marketing. The constant quest for fleeting moments of attention. The inability of digital marketing to quantify the impact of dollars spent, despite decades of promising otherwise.
Don’t get me wrong, blogs can and do make an impact. SEO, subscribers, engagement—these are all foundational to generating leads from your website.
But they will only take you so far.
That’s why books are such a large part of what we do at Clay Pigeon. They capture your thoughts in a moment and carry weight—beginning with the mere fact that they exist in the physical world.
So the next time someone on LinkedIn tells you that you have to get on board with AI or risk getting left behind, ignore them. They are trying to sell you something.
Instead, focus on sharing your humanity with your clients.
As you go through this month, ask yourself: How am I showing my human side?
