Marketing is Still a Love Story: A Modern Take on the Marketing Relationship

A modern take on marketing as a relationship

Is it just me, or does marketing feel a little evil sometimes? Only a super villain could possibly want (or have) access to the intimate customer data we marketers so often analyze and use to sell a product or create a very specific series of decisions and emotions. Open rates, click-through rates, how long someone’s spent on a particular web page. I scan reporting spreadsheets feeling like the Eye of Sauron, menacing and possibly omniscient in my search for customer behavioral patterns. And then, in my personal life, I find myself tracing the exact map an ad must have followed to reach me at that particular moment in scroll. (I’m creeped out, but I’m always a little impressed, too).

Certainly there’s a stark difference between what’s going on with B2B and B2C. The impulse buy that’s possible with my favorite makeup brands (looking at you, Dreamcloud) doesn’t translate to the lengthy, high-stakes partnerships that get negotiated over payroll, insurance, and other complex services. But both sides are telling a story, and both sides believe that they’re doing something good. They’re providing something people need, even if those people aren’t aware of it yet.

My argument? We are doing something good. Despite the sinister, “Big Brother” overtones of marketing’s inner world, we just want to make people’s lives easier. We work hard to understand how they think, and as we cultivate more and more empathy for our buyers, unpacking the way they talk, the way they search, and the way they ask questions, we put ourselves in the perfect position to tell a story. A love story!

This is where marketing becomes a real relationship.

Rich in ideas, poor in resonance

As marketers, we’re full of brilliant ideas, and we know our products and services inside and out. The story behind it all, the critical why, tends to be our stumbling block. I call that the Translation Gap: the distance between what we built (and why we’re proud of it) and how it actually becomes useful in the life of someone who doesn’t live inside our world.

Inside the office, (and, if it’s the Liger office, under the glitter of the disco ball), the logic is undeniable. We have spreadsheets, research, and branded decks that demonstrate how well we understand our own prowess.

Outside the office, the buyer is just trying to survive a Tuesday. Reduce risk. Avoid embarrassment. You know, look like they know what they’re doing.

So when we market from the inside-out – when we lead with our sophistication instead of their reality – we’re asking the customer to translate. (And don’t forget how busy the average customer is. Translation likely feels like extra homework, and who wants extra homework?)

Bernadette Jiwa, author of Marketing: a Love Story, offers us a wonderful reframing of marketing’s supposed evils and inevitable pitfalls: Marketing is where we begin, the vantage point we use to see the world through the eyes of our customers, so we can do better work, tell a truer story, and matter more.

No romance required

When I say “love story,” I don’t mean candlelight and vows. I mean something more practical (and more rare): reliability with a heartbeat.

Emotional loyalty is the moment a buyer stops shopping you like an interchangeable vendor and starts treating you like a trusted default. It’s the grace you get when something goes wrong. It’s the referral that shows up unprompted because someone genuinely wants their friend to have what you provide.

In other words: this is what happens when the experience of your brand consistently matches the promise of your brand.

So, how do we design for that?

A framework for “mattering” (and the brand experiences that prove it)

If marketing is where we begin, then our first job is to understand. The second job is to help.

Here’s a simple lens you can use to evaluate your brand experience through the eyes of your customer:

1) See: Are we looking at the world through the customer’s eyes?

Most companies think they understand their customers because they know demographics, industries, and job titles. “Seeing” is deeper than that. It touches on the heart of what customers are feeling and experiencing every day.

What are they trying to protect?
What do they fear getting wrong?
What would success change about their day-to-day life?

Brand experience signals that you “see”:

Your website describes the problem before it introduces the solution
Your language mirrors how customers actually talk
Your content answers questions buyers are already asking

If the customer doesn’t feel seen, nothing else works. An emotional connection can’t form in a relationship where one person isn’t paying attention.

2) Help: Are we reducing effort, confusion, or risk?

This is where marketing truly becomes a service.

Helping often looks unglamorous. It usually requires clarity and the ability to anticipate the question behind the question.

Brand experience signals that you “help”:

You explain how things work without making buyers dig
You remove friction (or at least acknowledge it honestly)
You guide customers through decision-making (no pressure)

A quick test: if your buyer feels more overwhelmed after interacting with you, the experience isn’t helping.

3) Prove: Are we making value tangible in their context?

Here’s what proof sounds like:

“This is what changed for a customer just like you.”
“This is how we handled the exact risk you’re worried about.”
“This is what the process looks like after you say yes.”

Brand experience signals that you “prove”:

Case studies are written for a specific buyer scenario
You show real outcomes
Your sales and onboarding experience confirms what your marketing promised

When proof is missing, buyers fill the gap with doubt. And doubt is the enemy of connection, meaning, and emotional resonance.

4) Matter: Are we making them feel genuinely better off?

This is the emotional part. “Mattering” is a business outcome, because it changes behavior.

When you matter, customers:

stay longer
forgive more
refer faster
resist competitors
trust you with more

“Mattering” is the feeling of progress. Relief. Confidence. Belonging. Pride. The sense that a brand protects their time, their identity, and their goals.

Brand experience signals that you “matter”:

You create early wins (fast confirmation they made the right choice)
You recognize the customer as a person
You show up with consistency, especially when something doesn’t go as planned

Let’s go back to the beginning

There’s nothing wrong with a little sentimentality, but that’s not what marketing as a love story is really about. At Liger, our top priority is being honest. We could deliver big, flashy campaigns and clever taglines (we’re awfully good at both of those), but where would those grand gestures leave us?

Marketing is where we begin, and it’s also where we choose the kind of relationship we want with our customers.

We can treat marketing like a machine – a system for extracting attention, engineering clicks, and nudging behavior – or we can treat it like a practice of empathy, a way of seeing people clearly and helping them well.

We choose the latter. Our roar may not be the loudest, but it’s still a roar you can hear and, more importantly, trust.