Marketing has never moved faster—or felt more crowded. Trends flare up and fade out in days, algorithms shift without warning, and brands are under constant pressure to stay relevant at scale. In that rush, it’s easy for marketing to become louder, broader and more automated, even as audiences are growing ever more selective about what they actually notice, remember and trust.
As an investor and spokesperson for brands Aviation Gin and Mint Mobile, actor and entrepreneur Ryan Reynolds says his North Star is simple: He’s trying to create a feeling, because “everything that’s intimate is memorable.” But in a supercharged digital marketplace, how do agencies and branding teams create messaging that feels personal and human without sacrificing speed, consistency and reach? It’s a difficult balance to attain—sacrificing authenticity for velocity can veer into manipulation, and manipulation can have negative effects not only on brands but also on consumers.
The members of the Senior Executive CMO Think Tank are seasoned experts in brand storytelling, digital advertising and customer engagement. Here, they share their perspectives on how to balance genuine emotional connection with scalability to create marketing that’s honest, helpful, emotionally resonant—and remembered.
“The magic happens when a brand can make a meaningful, emotional connection between its product, a cultural phenomenon and its customers’ interests.”
Get to Know Your Customers and Their Priorities
Emily Howard, Owner and CEO of Cheetah Strategy, has more than 25 years of experience in strategic leadership. For her, emotional impact in branding comes from intimacy—and that means connecting with customers.
“Strong connections are meaningful and therefore memorable,” she explains. “The magic happens when a brand can make a meaningful, emotional connection between its product, a cultural phenomenon and its customers’ interests.”
Such a connection won’t come from guessing or trend-chasing. Instead, Howard circles back to intimacy.
“The practical way to successfully make strong connections is to ensure your branding or marketing team intimately knows your customers and what matters most to them,” she says. “Regular interaction with customers is a great way for brands to know, and therefore connect with, customers across all touchpoints.”
Design for the Moments That Matter
Emotionally resonant marketing doesn’t require cunning; it requires clarity. Kurt Uhlir, Chief Marketing Officer at ez Home Search, says teams often overestimate novelty and underestimate empathy.
“Emotional impact doesn’t come from trying to be clever,” he says. “It comes from showing customers you understand the moment they’re in.”
That understanding becomes scalable when teams stop thinking in terms of channels and start thinking about pivotal moments.
“The teams that do this well design for specific decision points—the first doubt, the internal justification, the fear of making the wrong call,” Uhlir says. “Intimacy scales when those moments are identified once and expressed consistently everywhere.”
He adds that efficiency isn’t about doing more but about committing to less.
“Efficiency comes from reuse, not repetition,” Uhlir says. “Build a small set of emotional truths the organization commits to, then let teams execute them across channels with discipline. Memorable marketing isn’t louder. It’s steadier and more precise.”
“Personalizing what matters, rather than blanketing messages across all channels, may be the most scalable path to more memorable outcomes.”
Listen First, Then Follow Through With Empathy
Paul L. Gunn Jr., Founder of KUOG Corporation, says that before brands try to speak to customers, they must first learn to listen.
“Active listening is an important skill that allows us to understand what customers are saying and what they are seeking to resolve,” he says.
That understanding provides the critical detail needed to move marketing beyond messaging into meaning. Add in regular tests of audience response, and teams can continually improve their knowledge of and outreach to customers.
“Teams can weave cognitive empathy into marketing to achieve a long-term, tangible impact,” Gunn says. “Stress-testing campaigns to determine whether signals of respect and customer understanding are being sent—and whether they are building confidence—can provide meaningful insights.”
Gunn’s next piece of advice may seem counterintuitive: For bigger and better results, think smaller.
“Personalizing what matters, rather than blanketing messages across all channels, may be the most scalable path to more memorable outcomes,” he says. “Customers tend to engage with brands that demonstrate intimacy as a strategic deliverable and whose messaging acknowledges risk, belonging and trust, as well as a promise of relief from spoken or unspoken pain points.
“The emotional ties created by customers feeling seen through authentic human messaging can drive execution without sacrificing performance,” Gunn concludes.
Protect Energy to Preserve Creativity and Connection
A healthy and supportive internal culture is an essential component of high-performing teams. Rachel Perkins is the Founder of and Chief Strategist at Venturesome Strategies. She reminds us that empathy must start from within; if a marketing team doesn’t receive it, it’s hard for them to show it.
“Constantly engaging in fast-moving culture work burns a considerable amount of creative brainpower,” she says. “If your team is already exhausted, they can’t produce the intimate, out-of-the-box ideas everyone says they want.”
In a landscape obsessed with speed, Perkins argues that leadership must recognize the potential for burnout and take proactive steps to prevent it.
“Protecting focus and capacity should be a core part of leading a team that creates memorable, emotionally resonant marketing,” she says.
“Instead of asking, ‘What do we want to say?’ the better question is, ‘What is this person feeling in this moment—and what would make them feel understood?’”
Focus on the Moments When Memories Are Made
For Daryl Travis, Founder and Chairman of Brandtrust, Ryan Reynolds’ branding philosophy is less about creativity and more about how people form memories.
“Humans don’t remember information; they remember meaning,” Travis says. “And meaning is created emotionally, not rationally.”
He advises marketing teams to reframe what intimacy means, noting that doing so starts with exploring the “little moments when memories are formed” and the emotions such moments spark.
“Instead of asking, ‘What do we want to say?’ the better question is, ‘What is this person feeling in this moment—and what would make them feel understood?’”
Travis says answering that question can help teams pinpoint the small signals of empathy and connection that often matter more than grand gestures.
“Human cues have a disproportionate impact,” Travis says. “Focus on creating copy that acknowledges doubt, includes humor that relieves tension, or provides clarity that restores confidence.”
When brands get those moments right, he concludes, the payoff goes beyond scroll-stopping or capturing interest.
“Experiences that feel truly human earn more than attention; they earn intimacy, memory and loyalty.”
Speak to Someone, Not Everyone
Kathleen Lucente, Founder and CEO of Red Fan Communications, is direct about what most brands misunderstand.
“Intimacy creates memory. But here’s what most brands miss: It’s not about production value; it’s about specificity,” she says. “When your brand experience is memorable, it’s not about a tagline. It happens by speaking to someone, not everyone.”
Lucente shares how her team works with clients to find that “someone.”
“When we craft positioning, we ask, ‘Who loses sleep over the problem you solve, and what are they afraid of?’ That’s where intimacy lives,” she explains. “When a brand draws you in and you go out of your way to have it in your life—that’s intimate.”
Lucente’s how-to advice is both practical and pointed.
“Stop chasing reach and start chasing resonance,” she says. “One message that makes your buyer feel seen beats 10 that get scrolled past.”
Scale, Lucente adds, doesn’t come from conformity but from clarity and connection.
“Give your people stories, not scripts; humans connect with humans, not logos,” she emphasizes. “When your message is memorable, your customers become your marketing.”
Practical Ways to Build Scalable, Human-Centered Marketing
- Get to know your customers beyond surface-level data. Regular, meaningful interaction helps teams understand what truly matters to customers and create emotional connections that feel authentic.
- Design for decision moments rather than channels. Identifying key emotional inflection points once and expressing them consistently across touchpoints allows intimacy to scale without losing clarity.
- Listen first and test for empathy. Actively gathering and stress-testing customer feedback ensures marketing messaging signals respect, understanding and confidence.
- Protect your team’s energy to sustain creativity. Empathetic, resonant marketing depends on focused teams with the capacity to think clearly and creatively.
- Create for emotional context, not just rational need. Acknowledging doubt, easing tension and restoring confidence helps brands connect in the moments when memories are actually formed.
- Strive for specificity. Clear messages crafted for the person who feels a problem most deeply lead to stronger recall and turn customers into advocates.
Why Emotional Precision Outperforms Volume
In a marketing environment driven by speed, scale and constant change, there’s an evergreen advantage: emotional precision. Memorable marketing doesn’t come from being louder or more clever. It comes from knowing your audience deeply, respecting their context, listening before speaking and showing up with relevance in moments that genuinely matter.
The challenge isn’t choosing between empathy and efficiency but designing strategies and systems that support both. Brands that prioritize resonance over reach, focus over frenzy and human understanding over automation don’t just capture attention in the moment—they build memories, trust and loyalty that endure long after the campaign ends.
