Author’s note: This article begins with the premise that “brand love” is a fantasy that doesn’t drive sales. I won’t waste time explaining that here, as I’ve written about it before and the evidence is easy to find if you’re looking for it. This article isn’t about effectiveness. It’s about the ethical problem of trying to manufacture devotion in the first place.

Modern marketers talk like they’re founding monasteries: “community,” “devotion,” “purpose.” But they’re not building anything sacred. They’re just trying to sell products and feel better about it.

At some point, selling something people wanted wasn’t enough. Customers weren’t just supposed to buy and leave. All of a sudden, they had to believe. They had to belong. They had to evangelize. Get the tattoo. Identify with the values.

Seth Godin, Simon Sinek, Kevin Roberts—it’s the same sermon with different titles. Tribes. Whys. Lovemarks. Different preacher, same altar: business as spiritual mission.

Godin says marketing helps people “seek who they hope to become.” Sinek says “people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” Roberts claims business can “move the world” through love and respect.

Set aside nonprofits, where these ideas are a bit more applicable. In the context of for-profit companies, it’s ridiculous the moment you stop and think.

Still, it’s easy to fall for if you feel uneasy about selling—which you shouldn’t. This whole movement pretends it’s putting humanity into business. It’s not. It’s just putting a nicer face on the same old exploitation.

Brand love is exploitative

“Brand love” is the most seductive lie in all of this. It sells itself as connection, but it’s just another manipulation tactic. It’s deceptive—a sentimental veneer slapped onto the basic reality that brands exist to sell products and services. Far from being a step away from consumerism, it’s a strategy to deepen our engagement with it, pushing us toward a future where we develop inappropriate attachments to the things we buy.

This pursuit is toxic. It’s the desire to make customers feel emotionally invested in something that doesn’t deserve it. That’s not just bad business ethics. It’s a low-grade spiritual con.

Perhaps my Catholic faith allows me to see how the language of modern branding—community, devotion, brand evangelism, purpose—is a cheap knockoff of the real thing. But even if you threw all that out, it would still be obvious: brands can’t satisfy our need for meaning.

Customers want your “what,” not your “why”

Marketers peddle “brand love” as some elevated connection, but it’s a calculated tactic, a blurring of lines that should remain stark. The pursuit of fervent brand loyalty, manufactured “tribes,” and performative “purpose” isn’t about genuine connection; it’s a strategic cover up.

There’s a chasm between habitual brand loyalty and the messy, unconditional nature of love. Between brand-centric camaraderie and the vital bonds forged in family, friendship, faith, and neighborhood. Between brands “cosplaying” virtue for profit and genuinely advancing the common good.

When these boundaries shatter, the irony isn’t just the lack of guaranteed brand growth; it seeks a disordered attachment on both sides: marketers getting weirdly over-attached to their jobs, and customers getting weirdly over-attached to the crap they buy.

Healthy customers don’t have “relationships” with brands. They buy what they need and get on with their lives—raising kids, caring for aging parents, building friendships, working jobs that matter.

They don’t need to graft a brand’s “values” onto their identity. They don’t need your “why.” Most of them don’t even care about your values. And the ones who do either feel manipulated when you parrot their values to sell them something—or they boycott you when your values are too divisive.

Sure, you could convince a minority of customers to rely on your brand to fill an emotional or spiritual void in their lives. But, should you?

Real respect for customers means leaving them alone after the transaction. It means being useful—not getting them to join your cult.

Real respect for customers means leaving them alone after the transaction. It means being useful—not getting them to join your cult.”

Brands are businesses. That’s ok.

This is the part marketers don’t want to hear because it feels too small for their LinkedIn egos.

You’re not saving the world. You’re not building a movement. You’re not creating “meaning.” You’re selling a product or service. And that’s enough.

A business can do real good. It can support employees’ families. It can strengthen a local economy. It can meet real human needs. It can offer good products at fair prices. There is nothing inherently wrong with business.

You don’t need to shove fake emotions into everything you sell just to feel better about selling it (and if your product needs emotional theater to justify its existence, maybe it’s just not that good).

Marketers and business leaders feel uneasy about selling things. That’s why so many of them start reaching for bigger, loftier explanations for what they do. They start claiming their job isn’t really about selling—it’s about empowering people, building movements, changing lives. They stop saying “customer” and start saying “community.” They stop saying “product” and start saying “purpose.”

But you don’t need a higher calling to justify your work. You don’t need to pretend you’re leading some grand cultural shift just to feel okay about writing email copy or optimizing an ad. Do your job. Do it well. Do it ethically. That’s enough. There’s meaning in simply being competent and honest about what you’re doing.

Brand love is not love

If you’re working on a shampoo ad, you’re not “helping people become their best selves.” You’re selling shampoo. And that’s fine. Trying to reframe everything as moral uplift doesn’t make the work more noble—it just makes it more dishonest.

Marketing is a useful skill, not your identity. Treat it like that. Seek truth in the data. Unleash the power of creativity to think outside the box. Treat your coworkers with dignity, even when they get on your nerves.

Then go home to your kids, volunteer in your community, be there for your friend as they suffer through a divorce. That’s love. It looks nothing like “brand love.” It never will. That’s a good thing.

Austin Franke is a brand designer and namer at Woo Punch, where he helps clients stand out without the usual branding fluff. He also writes at BrandingBullshit.com, where he breaks down industry myths.