Your Brand Probably Sucks (And Here's Why Nobody Gives a Hoot About Your White Paper)

Bless your heart: your brand is drowning in a sea of sameness, and nobody—and I mean nobody—cares about your farcking white paper.

I sat down with Sonja O'Brien, a marketing strategist who spent 15+ years at a Fortune 100 before diving into the chaotic, beautiful mess of digital healthcare. And holy shaet, did she have some things to say about why most B2B brands feel about as authentic as a politician's apology.

The Problem: You're Starting the Conversation With Yourself

Here's the deal—we can all smell when we're being sold to. The second you lead with YOUR agenda, YOUR solution, YOUR revolutionary AI-powered blockchain whatever-the-farck, people's walls go up faster than you can say "synergy."

Sonja nailed it: "Organizations just start the conversation with themselves. It's a very traditional, formal conversation that we all have experienced. And you just tune out."

Ouch. But also... accurate.

Think about the last three cold emails you got. How many made you feel anything other than the urge to hit delete? Yeah, that's what I thought.

The Fix: Do the Deep Work (Even Though It's Uncomfortable AF)

Sonja told me about a project where her team was stuck in digital healthcare's greatest hits: everybody showing up exactly the same way, fighting for the same mindshare, targeting the same audience with the same tired messaging.

Sound familiar?

So what did they do? They actually did the work. Not the surface-level "let's update our mission statement" bullshaet. The real, uncomfortable, dig-deep work:

• Who the hell are we?

• What do we actually care about?

• Who is our audience really?

• What keeps them up at 3am?

They used brand archetypes to figure out their identity. Chose "the outlaw." Bold. Brash. Decidedly not okay with the status quo.

The result? An 80% increase in website traffic. Because when you actually stand for something and show up authentically, people notice.

Start With Why (No, Seriously)

Sonja's a big Simon Sinek fan, and for good reason. Because here's the thing executives forget when they're buried in quarterly targets: decisions are made emotionally but justified rationally.

You're not selling to procurement departments. You're selling to human beings with fears, hopes, and probably imposter syndrome they'd never admit to.

So stop starting with "what we do." Start with "why the farck we exist."

What problems in the world does your audience actually care about? Not the ones you think they should care about. The real ones. The ones that make their lives harder, their teams frustrated, their board breathing down their necks.

Make that emotional connection first. Then you've earned permission to talk about your solution.

Your Sales Language is Dehumanizing (And It's Killing Your Deals)

Can we talk about how farcked up sales terminology is?

"Prospects." "Pipeline." "Funnel." "Quota attainment."

You're literally talking about human beings like they're units to be processed through your spreadsheet.

And then you wonder why your renewal rates suck and your customers ghost you after month one.

Sonja put it perfectly: "A lot of the marketing and sales language that teams use is very dehumanizing. You're talking to a prospect, you're talking to a leader... person first."

These are people with:

• Kids who kept them up last night

• Bosses who don't understand their vision

• Budgets that got slashed

• Careers on the line with this decision

When you shift from "close the deal at all costs" to "what does my contact need from me right now to feel heard and understood," everything changes.

Yeah, it might take a little longer. But you know what you get? Customers who actually stick around. Who become advocates. Who refer you business. Who don't turn into support nightmares that eat your margins.

Play the Long Game (Because Givers Win)

Sonja referenced Adam Grant's "Give and Take," and the research is clear: short-term, givers lose. Takers win the quarter.

But over the marathon? Givers crush it.

If you're only thinking quarter to quarter, you're gonna default to transactional thinking. You're gonna chase that quick win, close that deal, hit that number... and then wonder why your churn rate looks like a horror movie.

But if you can focus on solving actual customer problems, meeting them where they are, contributing in meaningful ways—it comes back in leaps and bounds.

The lifetime value of a customer who feels genuinely connected to your brand? That's where the real money lives.

The Market is Begging for This

Here's what gets me excited: we've hit peak bullshaet in B2B marketing.

SEO gaming, pay-per-click arms races, automated outreach sequences that feel about as personal as a parking ticket—all of it is getting more expensive and less effective.

People are cognitively maxed out on pushy, transactional, sloppy pitches.

And what are humans psychologically wired for? Connection. Belonging. Relationships.

Which means this is your golden opportunity to zig while everyone else zags. Build real relationships. Play the longer game. Actually give a shaet about the humans you're serving.

The companies doing this right now? They're gobbling up market share because they're providing something that's been atrophying in most brands for a decade: genuine human connection.

The Bottom Line

Building an authentic brand that feels human isn't some touchy-feely nice-to-have.

It's a competitive advantage.

It's better retention, higher lifetime value, easier sales cycles, and customers who actually want to work with you.

But it requires you to slow down, do the uncomfortable identity work, and actually give a damn about people instead of just hitting your numbers.

Ready to stop being another forgettable logo in a sea of sameness?

[Watch the full episode with Sonja O'Brien here] to get the complete breakdown on building brands that actually connect with humans instead of treating them like line items in your CRM.

P.S. I know what you're thinking: "But Karl, we don't have time for all this relationship-building stuff. We need revenue NOW."

Cool. Keep doing what you're doing. Keep sending those white papers nobody reads. Keep starting conversations with your agenda. Keep wondering why your CAC keeps climbing and your churn rate stays embarrassing.

Or—radical idea—try treating your customers like the complex, emotional, relationship-craving humans they actually are and watch what happens.

You do you.

Karl Pontau hosts The Human Connection Podcast, where we talk about the stuff that actually matters in business: the humans running it. Because whether you're B2B or B2C, it's really H2H—human to human. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode where we probably say something that'll make your HR department uncomfortable.