The Day I Realized Good Marketing Isn’t About Looking Smart

Shayeri Sarkar
Jul 20
2 min read

A few months ago, I sat in a meeting where someone said,

“Let’s highlight our USPs more. People need to know we’re the smartest in the room.”

I smiled politely. Internally? I was screaming into a void.

Because here’s the thing I’ve learned over years of writing for brands big and small, premium and penny-pinching, clever and (unintentionally) chaotic:

People don’t buy because your brand is smart.They buy because you made them feel smart.

And I learned that lesson the hard way.

The Campaign That Flopped (and Why)

Early in my career, I worked on a campaign for a tech product — brilliant features, slick UI, Nobel Prize-worthy roadmap (okay, almost). We wrote about data pipelines and AI models and dashboards that could make Gordon Ramsay cry.

It got… crickets.

No shares, no clicks, barely a scroll pause.

We were basically screaming:

“LOOK HOW INTELLIGENT WE ARE.”

And people were like:

“K cool. Next.”

The One That Worked

A few months later, we switched gears.We flipped the script.

Instead of spotlighting the product, we spotlighted the user’s experience —

“Most people still manually clean their data. You? You just automated it in 2 clicks. Smart move.”

Suddenly, we were getting saved posts, DMs saying “felt seen,” even comments like

“Not me feeling like a genius on a Tuesday 😂”

Lesson?Validation > Vocabulary.Recognition > Rambling.

The Psychology of Feeling Smart

Let’s face it — we all love feeling like we “figured something out.”That we got the inside scoop. That we’re not just a buyer, but an early adopter. A lifehacker. A tastemaker. A quietly brilliant underdog.

When Spotify shows you your “Audio Aura,” it’s not analytics — it’s ego crack.

When Notion sends you a “You’ve been on a roll this week” nudge, it’s not productivity — it’s applause.

These brands get it. They don’t say “we’re smart.”They whisper:

“You’re smart. And we see you.”