Meaning, Not Marketing

June 6, 2025 

A few notes from the intersection of small business branding and AI.

Your Brand Needs More Than Marketing—It Needs Meaning

Your customers spend just a few minutes per year thinking about your products and services. If that. So how do you create communications that, maybe, add a minute or two to that total? Artificial intelligence may be making this much more difficult. Why? AI opens the door to way more content. And while AI can be a decently good writer, it’ll spit out news story-like reports, presentations, blogs, press releases, etc that have little or no brand voice. A sea of content is getting more and more homogenized. No wonder people don’t pay much attention. AI isn’t going away, so what’s a conscientious marketer to do? Infuse your brand with a fundamentally human trait: meaning.

What makes life worth living, according to science?

Writer and social scientist Emily Esfahani Smith explains that people find meaning in their lives in four distinct ways: purpose, belonging, moments of transcendence, and storytelling. Smith's extensive research, which included hundreds of interviews along with analysis of psychological studies, philosophy, and literature, shows that people who have a strong sense of meaning in life are far more resilient.

This isn't abstract philosophy or only for people seeking a higher plain—it's behavioral science, and it has profound implications for how brands might consider connecting with people. As Smith learned in her research, meaning isn't the same as happiness. In fact, the all-out pursuit of happiness can actually make you less happy. Meaning, however, gets at something deeper: connection, contribution, and a feeling of novelty.

Here’s how we accumulate meaning in our lives

Belonging isn't just about being around people—it's about being in relationships where you are valued for who you are intrinsically and where you value others. Research has shown that the sense of belonging you get from being in a relationship or group may be the most important driver of meaning.

Purpose transcends the individual. It's not the same thing as a job that makes you happy. The key to purpose is using your strengths to serve a greater good, another person or a pet. Research has shown that even the purpose from tending a small plant brings meaning that leads to a healthier life. Whether it’s a far-reaching goal driving us to make a contribution to the world or the simple act of watering a plant, purpose is a fundamental way we find meaning.

Moments of transcendence connect us to something larger than ourselves. The word "transcend" means to rise above, so transcendent experiences are when we feel lifted above our ordinary waking consciousness, above the ordinary world itself, out of our ego, and connected to something greater. These moments create meaning.

Storytelling gives our experiences coherence. Creating a narrative about the things in your life brings clarity. It helps you understand how you became you. And telling parts of your story, especially episodes about redemption, growth, or love, can provide a sense of meaning in your life. Storytelling is also the one way we can share meaning from person to person.

When Brands Become Part of the Human Story

Here's where it gets interesting for brands: If your brand can connect with customers and other stakeholders in these moments and ways, your communications will be exponentially more powerful. Sure your brand can just sell products—but if it can become part of the very experiences that give people's lives meaning, that can change everything.

Think about it. Your brand can foster belonging by creating communities, friendships, and connections between like-minded people. A running shoe company doesn't just sell footwear; it can connect runners to a tribe of people who understand the 5 AM alarm and the runner's high. A coffee brand doesn't just caffeinate; it can help create connection across the table at a cafe.

Your brand can also look for connection points during intense moments of experience when people get outside of themselves, like running a huge set of rapids, listening to a favorite song, blissing out on a vista, or getting high on endorphins. These aren't just marketing moments—they're meaning-making moments.

The Power of Brand Storytelling

Arguably the surest way to find meaning is through storytelling because storytelling is the one method that has the potential for transference—passing meaning from one person to another. Likewise, if your brand tells a meaningful story to the right person at the right moment, you have the potential to create something marketing tactics alone cannot: a deep, lasting impression that becomes part of someone's personal narrative.

There's a myth in our culture that the search for meaning is some esoteric pursuit—that you have to travel to a distant monastery or page through dusty volumes to figure out life's great secret. Actually, that's not true. There are untapped sources of meaning all around us—right here, right now. 

This is why storytelling has been such a fundamentally human project since our very beginnings. In an age where AI can generate endless homogenized content, authentic storytelling becomes not just valuable—it becomes essential for survival. You can use AI, but make sure it’s telling your brand’s unique story.

You don't need a massive budget or a revolutionary product to create meaningful connections. You need clarity about who you are, what you stand for, and how you contribute to the larger human story.

Enter Brand Gravity: Meaning for the AI Era

This is where Brand Gravity becomes essential. Brand Gravity is a tool to build a solid brand foundation that will define your organization's purpose, values, emotions, positioning, expression, and more. When defined richly and executed well, Brand Gravity can create a powerful gravitational pull toward your brand.

In today's AI-driven landscape, this becomes even more critical. As marketing automation and AI content generation become standard practice, your foundational brand elements need to be structured with a clear, consistent taxonomy that AI systems can interpret and implement faithfully. Without AI-readiness, your brand risks inconsistent expression or worse, sounding just like everyone else.

The difference is stark. Generic AI-generated content reads like, well, generic content. But when AI is guided by a comprehensive Brand Gravity framework, it can produce communications that feel authentic, purposeful, and distinctly yours—because it's drawing from the deep well of meaning that defines your organization.

The Meaning Advantage

Research has found that people today are searching for meaning more than ever. They want to feel part of something, and one way they express this need is by the brands they choose. This isn't just about corporate social responsibility or brand purpose statements—though those can be part of it. It's about understanding that in every interaction, every piece of content, every customer touchpoint, you have an opportunity to contribute to someone's sense of meaning.

When you get this right, something remarkable happens. Your marketing stops feeling like marketing. Your communications become contributions to the human conversation. Your brand becomes not just a commodified choice, but a meaningful choice.

As Daniel Pink has written, "Meaning is the new money." In today's marketplace, brands that can articulate a compelling purpose and meaning have a significant advantage. You can make more intentional decisions, develop new products and services that dovetail with your brand, develop messaging that truly resonates, and stand out in a competitive environment with clarity about what makes your brand vibrant and unique.

Building Your Brand's Meaning

The four pillars of human meaning don’t have to be just psychological concepts—they can be practical frameworks for brand building. Here are some questions you might ask:

How does your brand create belonging? Do you bring people together? Do you help them find their tribe? Do you make customers feel seen and valued for who they are, not just what they buy?

What's your brand's purpose beyond profit? How do you contribute to something larger? What change do you make in the world, however small? Can you imbed purpose into one of your products or services?

Where is your brand during potential moments of transcendence? When do people feel something larger when they interact with you? What experiences lift them above the ordinary? How can your brand stay present?

What stories does your brand tell and help others tell? How do you help people make sense of their experiences? What narratives do you enable in their lives? How do you encourage the sharing of stories?

These aren't just questions for brand workshops—they're the foundation for every piece of content you create, every campaign you launch, every customer interaction you design.

The Future Belongs to Meaningful Brands

We're living through the early days of an AI revolution that will reshape how brands communicate. The brands that will thrive aren't necessarily those with the best algorithms or the biggest budgets—they're the ones that understand what it means to be human.

When you live a meaningful life, the effects cascade into other areas of your life. People leading meaningful lives have better cardiovascular health, are less likely to suffer from cognitive impairments, and their brains respond to adversity better. The same principle applies to brands. When your brand operates from a foundation of meaning, the effects cascade into every aspect of the business—from employee engagement to customer loyalty to long-term resilience. Indeed, meaning is the new productivity, and Brand Gravity can you you define it.

In a world where attention is scattered and trust is scarce, meaning becomes the ultimate differentiator. It's what transforms customers into communities, transactions into relationships, and brands into drivers of purpose and storytelling.

The question isn't whether your brand can afford to invest in meaning. In an AI-driven world where anyone can generate adequate content, the question is whether your brand can afford not to.

Ready to discover your brand's meaning and magnetic pull? Learn more about Brand Gravity and how making your brand AI-ready will preserve its authentic voice and deep meaning. Because in a world full of noise, meaning is the signal that cuts through.