When the dashboard starts making the decisions

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Hey Marketers, welcome back 👋

I’ve been thinking about something lately.

Most marketers start from a good place. We want to connect, help, move people. We care about the humans behind the click ❤️

That’s how it begins — with empathy. We listen, we observe, we try to understand what people actually need.

But somewhere along the way, things start to shift.
Between dashboards, spreadsheets, and endless Slack threads, we lose the reason we started.
We stop creating for people and start creating for performance.

It doesn’t happen all at once. It’s small and quiet.
We tweak a headline because it got 2% more clicks.
We cut a story moment because the watch time dropped.
We change a line that “didn’t convert,” even if it was the most honest one we had.

Before long, our work sounds sharper, cleaner, more polished — but somehow emptier.

That’s the data trap: when we let numbers make the creative decisions and forget that marketing was never meant to serve a dashboard.

When data becomes the driver 💬

The algorithm doesn’t know your audience. It doesn’t understand humor, timing, or what it feels like to see your ad at midnight while questioning your next move.

It doesn’t know how your words land after someone’s bad day, or how a small line of copy might make someone feel seen.

It only knows patterns.
And patterns don’t create connection — they repeat it.

When we build campaigns only around what performs, we’re really just copying what once worked. We’re not learning, we’re looping.

That’s how marketing becomes predictable.
And predictable doesn’t change minds — it only keeps the machine running.

Why this matters more than ever

The more we chase the algorithm, the more every brand starts to sound the same.

The same tone, the same phrasing, the same UGC template, the same “authentic” storytelling formula that was once fresh — now feels manufactured.

People can feel that.
They may still click, but they don’t connect.
And connection is what builds memory.

Metrics might show you what people notice, but not what they remember.
The data might tell you what got attention, but not what earned trust.

That gap — between attention and emotion — is where real marketing lives.

🧍‍♀️ When Every Brand Sounds the Same

Scroll through beauty ads today and it’s hard to tell who’s speaking.
Soft pastels, dewy skin, a whisper of “realness” — and the same captions about confidence, self-care, and authenticity. Fenty and Glossier once defined that language because it was true to them. Now, dozens of newer brands mirror the same tone and storytelling rhythm — only without the lived emotion behind it.

Take Summer Fridays and Rare Beauty — both beautiful, both intentional, but often echoing the same visual softness, self-love messaging, and “perfectly imperfect” tone that Glossier popularized. It’s not imitation out of laziness; it’s what happens when strategy follows trends instead of emotion.

The result? Campaigns that look right but feel empty.
The algorithm rewards familiarity, but audiences remember honesty.

Keeping your marketing human 🧠

I’ve been trying to ground myself again in the basics — the kind that don’t show up in a spreadsheet.

✨ Before changing anything, I ask: would I say this to a real person?
If it feels robotic, it’s probably written for the algorithm, not the audience.

✨ When I review results, I look past the number.
If something performs, I ask why. What moment, what truth, what feeling made it work?

✨ When I test, I remind myself: the goal isn’t to find the perfect metric.
It’s to find what makes someone feel something.

That mindset shifts everything.
Because data should sharpen empathy, not replace it.

We don’t market to screens.
We market to people who scroll while tired, who watch between meetings, who click because something hit close to home.

The algorithm doesn’t understand that — but we do 💡

A small reminder for all of us

The best marketing isn’t optimized to death.
It’s honest.
It’s specific.
It respects the audience’s time and trusts their intelligence.

If you care about what people feel — not just what they click — you’re already doing better marketing than most.

🪄 From Me to You

This week, I came across an ad from That Startup Guy that perfectly shows what “human-first marketing” looks like:

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Summary

When performance becomes the priority, we lose the reason people cared in the first place.
Data is a mirror, not a map.
It helps us see what’s there — but not where to go next.

The best marketers know when to measure, and when to feel.

Next Week (Part 2): The Balance Point 🧩

We’ll look at how small brand teams use data to inspire ideas, not dictate them — and how creative marketers keep their storytelling edge while still growing fast.

💌 A small favor before you go:
If this landed in your Promotions tab, just drag it into Primary — and hit “Yes” when Gmail asks.
That way, you’ll keep getting these notes each week (without them getting lost in the algorithm).