🇨🇦Wondering whether being more human makes a difference?

Let’s review the evidence for focusing on audiences’ concerns and communicating empathetically

When the pandemic was declared, communications suddenly became important, beyond clever media campaigns, branding, and strategy. Organizations still needed us to convey business messages, but they wanted it to be done in an empathetic, understanding way. In short, they needed to show they were human.

🤗 We found ourselves writing newsletters to harassed IT peeps, that recognized the stress they were feeling having to digitally transform their companies overnight (while reminding them not to overlook the security aspects, with which our client could help them).

🤗 We were called on to craft sensitive sales outreach emails, that checked in with customers’ on their mental health, and proffered help rather than shamelessly exploiting the opportunity.

🤗 A little while later, as Black Lives Matter protests raged in the USA, we were finding a more inclusive, less cancel-culture way to respond to inappropriate social media posts that another client feared might be a possibility from its commercial partners.

Witnessing mental health, wellbeing and inclusion suddenly become central to B2B marketing communications and public relations was a truly astounding turn of events that we could not have predicted. Since then, particularly with the rise of AI, there is starting to be increased emphasis on demonstrating the core qualities of being human. Speaking to McKinsey in 2023, London Business School economist Andrew J. Scott said, “As machines get better at being machines, humans have to get better at being more human.”

What does it mean to be human?

McKinsey’s February 2025 article, on a new operating model for people management, defined it as showing “empathy, compassion, judgment, and inspiration”. A Bain Consulting brief on customer experience, published in April 2025, described “recognition, understanding, and emotional connection across every channel and every moment”.

This aligns with how we conceive of “being human” at Usher & Spur. For us, it means understanding what matters to the people you’re talking to. And what “matters” is a question of the strength of the emotions evoked. It can be pressing and immediate, like the fear of getting COVID or the stress of work overload. Or it can be something larger, like a passion for overcoming climate change or putting an end to systemic racism.

Why is it important to be human?

Renowned consulting companies, such as McKinsey and Bain are clear that thinking about what’s important to people is good for business. In the above articles, Bain asserts that customers “want a human relationship”, “want to feel known and cared for”; while McKinsey lists listed “elevating humanness” as one of the three keys to getting the most from employees.

Usher & Spur is founded on audience-centricity, a principle that has stayed with me since I was introduced to the concept of market-focused organizations while at Hewlett-Packard, back at the turn of the millennium. For years, we have been trying, sometimes vainly, to help organizations think in terms of their target audience and *their* concerns, not in terms of the organization and what *it* wants to say.

In the last few years, we’ve been working more with employer brand and corporate communications as well as B2B marketing, and we’ve seen first-hand the very real need to be more human, to talk to people not companies or functions, to empathize rather than dictate. Bearing in mind their concerns and emotions when we communicate helps to build trust with our customers and employees, even investors and the general public, because it shows that we “get it”, and that we care.

Is “being human” just a sales or HR tactic?

In a LinkedIn post Usher & Spur published in early 2022, we asked whether the greater human focus companies had shown since the beginning of the pandemic was here to stay. One response we received was that, like with CSR, companies have no choice but to continue. Thinking about why that might be, we wondered if it was because companies’ customers and employees want them to be more human? And so it makes economic sense in competitive commercial and employment markets? But what about it being ‘the right thing to do’? And what does that mean exactly?

You may have heard before, that people make decisions based on emotions, and rationalize them afterwards. In 'Humanizing B2B' , Paul Cash, founder of Rooster Punk, a UK-based agency, says brands build trust through being “likeable”. (I’m oversimplifying and you should read the book.) And this echoes what Steve Reinemund, former CEO of PepsiCo called “speaking about the heart”, in reference to his push to make diversity and inclusion an integral part of the company culture, and not just a good business case (“the head”, as opposed to “the heart”). Both the concept of likeability and that of speaking about the heart encompass a notion of conviction, of shared values, and not just of a rational value proposition.

In short: People want the organizations they interact with to treat them like human beings, and there is both a business and a moral case for doing so. Audience-centric communications facilitate building trust and inspiring action, by enabling you to communicate with empathy. How do you rate your department’s ability to tune in to what matters to your audiences?