Brand is a simplification tool. And the customer is the hero. Never the brand.
Paul Cash has spent thirty years trying to make B2B feel human. As Founder and Chief Rooster at Rooster Punk and co-author of Humanizing B2B, he works with technology CEOs on brand-led growth from one premise: business is bought by people, and the job of brand is to make a complex company easy to understand and easy to believe in.
"my whole job is to try and simplify all of that to one thing, which is just trying to understand the human psychology of the buyer"
Paul Cash is Founder and Chief Rooster at Rooster Punk, the B2B brand and storytelling agency, and co-author of Humanizing B2B.
He has spent thirty years in B2B marketing and founded three agencies along the way. Before Rooster Punk he founded Hurricane Marketing, sold to Target Media Communications Group, and co-founded the technology marketing agency Tidalwave. His career began on a placement year at HP and an early job in an ad agency, where one supportive boss gave him the confidence that marketing was his calling. Today he advises technology CEOs on brand-led growth, and argues the work comes down to one thing: understanding the human psychology of the buyer.
"It's always the customer is the hero in that story. I think it's often not told by the company."
"We are wired for stories."
Cash points to oxytocin, the chemical tied to trust and intimacy. Hearing a story raises it by between 10 and 15 percent, which is why a well-told story makes a buyer engage and trust more. In B2B, where trust is the scarce thing, that is the whole game.
"Human psychology, biopsychology, go deep. It's where all the answers are."
Asked what marketing leaders should understand better, Cash does not reach for a channel or a tactic. He sends people back to how buyers actually think and decide. Technology companies hide behind jargon and acronyms, and the work is getting past the speeds and feeds to the person making the call.
"That AI can solve everything at the click of a button."
Cash names this as the most overrated idea in marketing. AI changed the tools, not the need for human connection. As the human question grows louder, he sees leaders investing again in personal brand, real events and the trust that only people build.
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