The corporate ivory tower is leaning. Actually, it’s basically crumbling. For decades, the standard operating procedure for any decent-sized company was to keep a healthy, polished distance from the actual humans buying their products. You had "customer segments" and "target demographics," but you didn't really have people. Then the internet happened, and suddenly, the "consumer" started talking back. They didn’t just want a product; they wanted a pulse.
Getting closer to the people isn't some fluffy HR initiative or a marketing tagline you slap on a bus. It’s a survival mechanism. Honestly, if you look at the brands that are actually winning right now—the ones with the weirdly obsessed cult followings—they all have one thing in common. They’ve collapsed the gap between the boardroom and the living room.
The Death of the Arm's-Length Brand
Look at the old guard. Big Pharma, massive banks, legacy retail. For a long time, being "professional" meant being cold. You communicated through press releases. You had a legal team vet every single tweet until it tasted like lukewarm water. It was safe. It was also incredibly boring.
But then, things shifted.
We saw the rise of the "founder-led" brand. Think about how someone like Yvon Chouinard handled Patagonia. He didn’t just sell jackets; he lived the life of the people who wore them. He was closer to the people because he was the people. When Patagonia decided to give the entire company away to fight climate change, it wasn't a PR stunt. It was an alignment of values that felt personal. People felt seen.
Compare that to a brand that suffers from "disconnection syndrome." When a company ignores the lived reality of its customers—like charging exorbitant fees during a recession or using AI chatbots that can't solve a single human problem—they move further away. And in 2026, distance equals irrelevance.
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Why Proximity is the New Luxury
You’ve probably noticed that "luxury" doesn't mean what it used to. It's not just about gold foil and velvet ropes anymore. Today, luxury is access. It’s feeling like you’re part of an inner circle.
Take the beauty industry. Glossier basically built a billion-dollar empire not by telling women how to look, but by listening to how they already looked. They spent years in the comments sections of their blog, Into The Gloss, before they even launched a single cream. They stayed closer to the people by treating their audience as a focus group that actually mattered. They didn't guess. They knew.
The Feedback Loop That Actually Works
Most companies say they want feedback. They send out those annoying "How did we do?" emails with the 1-10 scale. Nobody likes those.
Real proximity happens in the trenches.
- Discord Communities: Brands like Midjourney or various gaming studios don't hide behind support tickets. They live in Discord. They see the bugs, the memes, and the frustrations in real-time.
- Radical Transparency: When things go wrong, the "distant" brand hides. The "close" brand owns it. Look at how some software companies post their "public roadmaps." They’re saying, "Here’s what we’re building, and here’s where we’re failing."
- User-Generated Everything: It’s not just about testimonials. It’s about letting the people define the brand.
The Messy Reality of Human Connection
Being closer to the people is kind of terrifying for a CEO. Why? Because people are messy. They’re unpredictable. They get angry. They have opinions that don't always fit into a neat quarterly report.
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If you’re going to bridge that gap, you have to be okay with losing a bit of control. You can’t "curate" a real relationship. If a brand tries to fake being "down to earth," the internet will sniff it out in about four seconds. We’ve all seen those cringey corporate TikToks where a 50-year-old executive tries to use Gen Z slang. It’s painful. It’s the opposite of being close; it’s a performance of closeness.
True proximity requires a level of vulnerability. It means admitting that the company doesn't have all the answers. It means hiring "Community Managers" who are actually members of the community, not just social media interns with a content calendar.
Practical Steps to Close the Gap
If you feel like your brand or your project is drifting away into that corporate void, you need to course-correct fast. This isn't about a new ad campaign. It’s about changing the plumbing of how you operate.
Stop looking at spreadsheets for a minute.
Data is great for seeing what happened, but it’s terrible at explaining why. You need to actually talk to people. And no, a formal survey doesn't count. Go where they hang out. Read the Reddit threads about your industry. See what people are complaining about when they think you aren't listening.
Humanize your leadership.
Nobody wants to follow a logo. They want to follow a person. This doesn't mean every CEO needs to be an influencer, but they should at least be visible. Share the "behind the scenes" struggles. Talk about the "why" behind a difficult decision.
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Build "with," not "for."
The most successful products of the next decade won't be dreamed up in a vacuum. They’ll be co-created. Beta tests, early access groups, and community voting are tools that keep you closer to the people who will eventually pay your bills.
Kill the jargon.
If you find yourself using words like "synergy," "value-add," or "leveraging," stop. Real people don't talk like that. If you wouldn't say it to a friend over a coffee, don't put it in your marketing copy.
Empower your front line.
The people who talk to your customers every day—the support reps, the retail clerks, the delivery drivers—are your most important assets. If they are miserable, your brand is miserable. Give them the power to make things right for a customer without needing a manager’s signature. That’s how you show you actually care about the human on the other end of the transaction.
The Long Game of Trust
We are living through a massive trust deficit. People don't trust the government, they don't trust the news, and they definitely don't trust big corporations. The only way to win trust back is through proximity. You can't trust someone you don't know.
Getting closer to the people isn't a "one and done" project. It’s a daily commitment to being slightly more human and slightly less corporate. It’s about realizing that at the end of every transaction, there’s a person with a life, a family, and a whole lot of stress. If you can make their life even 1% easier or more interesting by actually listening to them, you’ve already won.
Actionable Next Steps
- Conduct a "Jargon Audit": Go through your website and customer emails. Delete every word that sounds like it was written by a committee. Replace it with how you'd actually speak.
- Shadow Your Support Team: Spend four hours a month reading support tickets or listening to customer calls. Don't try to "fix" it yet—just listen to the language they use and the problems they repeat.
- Create a Low-Stakes Feedback Channel: Start a "Suggestion Box" that isn't a black hole. Whether it’s a dedicated Slack channel for power users or a simple "reply to this email" prompt, make it easy for people to reach you directly.
- Prioritize Person-to-Person Content: Instead of highly produced brand videos, try raw, unedited updates from the people actually building the product. Authenticity beats production value every single time in 2026.