When the internet first came out, it promised worldwide connection. Human interaction at scale. The democratization of voice and opportunity. A way for anyone, anywhere, to share their gifts with people who needed them.
Yet somewhere along the way, something fundamental shifted.
Marketing, which should be about creating meaningful exchanges between people, became increasingly mechanical. Algorithmic. Extractive.
Businesses started treating people as data points in spreadsheets. As targets to acquire and segments to exploit.
The entire apparatus of modern marketing seems designed around a singular objective: extract value as quickly as possible before moving on to the next victim.
And I use that word deliberately. Victim.
This creates a profound paradox. We have more tools than ever to connect with people, yet connection has never felt more elusive. We can reach anyone instantly, yet meaningful relationships seem harder to build.
We know more about our audiences than ever before, yet we feel like we can’t reach them.
We feel more alone and disconnected than ever before.
The Loneliness of Screens
The loneliness epidemic has become so severe that both the United Kingdom and Japan have instituted ministers of loneliness.
Government positions dedicated to combating what has become a public health crisis.
Think about that for a moment.
We live in the most connected era in human history, yet governments are creating entire departments to address the crushing isolation people feel…
The internet has fundamentally shifted how we relate to people online, transforming connection into something conscious rather than unconscious.
In person, relating to others happens naturally. It’s unconscious.
We read body language, tone, facial expressions. We adjust instinctively. We build trust through a thousand tiny signals we’re not even aware we’re processing.
Online, all of that disappears.
Instead, we must consciously construct every aspect of how we present ourselves and relate to others.
Every word is chosen. Every image is curated. Every interaction is mediated through screens and algorithms.
We can be anything online, so who do we choose to be?
Marketing, a tool used by businesses to generate trust, became the ultimate expression of this conscious relating.
The deliberate exercise of connecting with people through digital channels. But here’s where things went wrong:
Instead of using this conscious relating to create more authentic connection, businesses started using it to optimize for extraction. To manipulate. To coerce.
Because they could be anything online, and all you needed was enough people to believe it.
They studied the mechanics of human psychology not to serve people better, but to exploit them more efficiently.
The result is a digital landscape where people feel increasingly isolated despite being surrounded by other people’s “content.”
Where marketing has become synonymous with manipulation.
Where the very tools meant to bring us together have driven us further apart.
This disorientation runs deeper than tactics or channels. It’s a fundamental misalignment between the systems we’ve built and the humans those systems are meant to serve.
We’ve taken the conscious act of digital relating and turned it into something cold. Mechanical. Inhuman.
And we wonder why people feel so alone…
Marketing as Relationship Building
Here’s the thing. If you’re a business owner who built something real, you already know this in your bones.
Your best clients didn’t come from a campaign. They came from a conversation. A handshake. A referral from someone who trusted you. They stayed because you followed through, because you cared about the work, because you showed up as an actual person.
That’s how you built your company. Not with funnels and automation. With relationships.
But at some point, someone told you that wasn’t enough. That you needed to “scale your marketing.” Post on six platforms. Run optimised ads. Automate your follow-ups. Treat every interaction like a conversion opportunity.
So you hired people. Agencies. Freelancers. They did the work. Posted the posts. Ran the campaigns.
And the marketing they produced didn’t sound like you. It sounded like everyone else.
Because nobody ever asked the right question. Not “what should we post?” but “what is it about this company that makes people trust it?”
That question lives inside your head. It’s the instinct you’ve been running on for years. The way you read people. The way you earn trust without thinking about it. The way your best clients describe you to their friends.
Nobody ever pulled that out of your head and turned it into something your team could follow.
That’s not a marketing problem. That’s a translation problem.
And it’s the reason your marketing feels disconnected from the business you actually built.
The Way Forward
The answer isn’t more tactics. It’s not a better agency or a new platform or another round of content nobody asked for.
The answer is going back to what already works.
Your approach to building relationships isn’t separate from marketing. It IS marketing. The real kind. The kind that makes people choose you over competitors with bigger budgets. The kind that turns clients into advocates who send you business for years.
The challenge is turning that approach into something bigger than one person. Something your team can see, understand, and run with. Something that scales without losing what makes it work.
That’s the work worth doing. Not more tactics. Not another platform. The work of making your marketing as human as the business you built.
I call it Human Marketing. And I wrote a manifesto about it.
It’s for business owners who know their marketing doesn’t reflect who they are. Who built something real through relationships and want their marketing to grow from those same roots.
