Suad Merchant, Chief Marketing Officer, GEMS Education.For most of my career in marketing, one assumption remained largely unchallenged: if you could control the message, you could shape perception.
Today, I’m not sure that’s true anymore.
We live in a world where almost every brand has access to the same tools. AI can generate content in seconds. Production quality is no longer a differentiator. Every campaign can be polished, personalised and optimised.
And yet, something interesting is happening. As content becomes easier to create, audiences are becoming harder to convince.
Over the years, I have led campaigns across sectors, markets and audiences, and if there is one pattern that consistently emerges, it is this: the stories that perform best are often the ones nobody would traditionally describe as marketing.
They are rooted in real people, real emotions and real experiences.
The stories already happening around us
At GEMS Education, some of our most successful campaigns have emerged not from a discussion about brand strategy, but from observing the everyday moments that shape school life.
A child struggling to find the right Arabic word. A teacher changing the trajectory of a student’s confidence. A moment of belonging between families from different cultures.
Individually, these moments seem small. Collectively, they reveal something powerful about how people experience identity, community and connection.
That lesson extends far beyond education. Many brands are still focused on creating stories. Increasingly, the brands that stand out are those paying closer attention to the stories already happening around them.
The brands winning attention today are not necessarily the loudest or the most polished. They are the ones willing to invest the time and effort required to understand people deeply enough to sound human.
Why people trust what feels familiar
There is a reason for this.
People instinctively connect with experiences that feel familiar. When someone shares a genuine moment, audiences do not simply consume the story; they place themselves inside it. They imagine what it felt like. They recognise elements of their own lives within it.
That is why lived experience will almost always be more powerful than institutional messaging.
Polished campaigns may generate visibility. Human stories generate connection. One creates social currency. The other creates emotional currency.
And while visibility can capture attention, emotional connection is what ultimately builds trust, loyalty and community.
The power of imperfection on people
Interestingly, some of the moments that resonate most are not the perfectly curated ones. They are the moments that reveal vulnerability, uncertainty or imperfection.
For years, brands believed credibility came from appearing flawless. Today, audiences often respond more positively when organisations and leaders show the realities behind the scenes.
Perfection creates distance. Humanity creates relatability.
This helps explain why a simple video filmed on a phone can sometimes outperform a highly produced campaign, or why a leader sharing a personal lesson often generates greater engagement than a carefully crafted corporate statement.
People do not expect brands to be perfect. They expect them to be real.
Why education marketing makes this impossible to ignore
Education brings this shift into particularly sharp focus because schools are not products. They are communities.
Parents do not choose a school because of a slogan. They choose it because they can picture their child belonging there. Because they trust the people within it. Because they recognise something familiar in the stories being told.
But the principle applies equally across industries.
People do not build relationships with brands because they admire them from a distance. They build relationships because they see something of themselves reflected in them.
From storytelling to story listening
For marketers, this requires a subtle but important shift in mindset.
For years, our industry has celebrated storytelling. Perhaps the next chapter belongs to story listening. The ability to identify cultural tensions, everyday truths and lived experiences may become more valuable than the ability to craft the perfect narrative around them.
The brands that remain relevant will not be those that spend the most time perfecting narratives. They will be those that spend the most time understanding the people behind them.
Because authenticity is not a content strategy. It is a mindset.
And in a world increasingly shaped by algorithms, automation and artificial intelligence, humanity may prove to be the most valuable competitive advantage of all.
By Suad Merchant, Chief Marketing Officer, GEMS Education.
