Hey there, my favorite Tochyverser,
Last week, I told you about Lola’s home and how it reminded me that authenticity matters; whether you’re choosing platforms for your business or decorating your living room.
And incase you missed it, go read it!
This week, I need to talk about something that’s been sitting heavy on my chest since November 5th.
Something that connects to that same theme of authenticity, but goes deeper. Much deeper.
We need to talk about how marketing lost its soul.
And before you roll your eyes thinking this is another “back in my day” rant, hear me out. Because this isn’t only about nostalgia (though there will be plenty of that, I promise!). This is about what happens when we prioritize speed over substance, conversions over connection, and metrics over meaning.
This is about what we’ve lost. And more importantly, what we can still get back.
Fair warning: This newsletter is saturated with extreme levels of nostalgia that will make you sit for the next hour reminiscing about your childhood and calling your siblings, parents, and childhood first loves.
You’ve been warned!
On November 5th, I spoke on an X (Formerly Twitter) Space hosted by Founders Connect, a sequel to conversations sparked by the Unsung Architects of Growth documentary.
And if you are wondering what that is, well, that’s the documentary below;
Mid-conversation, Tega Gabriel said something that stopped me in my tracks:
“We’ve lost the golden era of marketing. The era where creativity was the soul of marketing, and marketing had… well, soul.”
Now, if you know Tega and I, you know we’re sparingly ever on the same side of a discussion. So when I found myself nodding so hard I nearly gave myself whiplash, I knew this was something bigger. It was a truth bomb that exploded in my chest and transported me back to December 2024 when I was planning the launch of Tochy’s POV.
One of my planned articles was titled ‘Marketing Has Lost Its Soul’.
I never finished writing it then. But after that conversation? I knew it was time.
Tega, if you’re reading this enjoy this rare moment of us agreeing. Grin all you want. You’ve earned it.
Let Me Take You Down Memory Lane
I know what some of you are thinking: “Tochy, marketing in our childhood served the demographics and distribution channels available then. Things have changed.”
And yes, I see your point.
But I’m also telling you: Marketing has lost its soul.
Let me show you what I mean.
Now, remember…
“B without BB is like a train without an engine.”
What’s the first word that came to your mind?
Blue Band
Shout out to my cousin Favor who refused to bathe at night until this advert started playing around 8 PM on NTA. That’s how powerful it was. A butter spread was dictating bath time in Nigerian households.
“Pikolo, I know say one day, you go make us proud.”
First word? Peak Milk.
The milk of the rich and bougie. If you know, you know.
And if you grew up in a middle-class household like mine with civil servant parents, then you always had “Cowbell, awa milk!” because who no get Peak Milk go get wetin? Cowbelllll!!!
“Mama do good ooo, mama wey cook for us.”
I just had goosebumps run down my spine. This is a LOT of memories.
Hey God! Indomie gave us back-to-back-to-back HITS:
“Indomie, Indomie, Indomie noodles, parampam!”
Chillllsssss. Literal chilllssss!!!
Hold on, hold on, how many of you saw your names on Coca-Cola bottles?
I never did, but I sure spent a lot of money buying Coca-Cola trying to find either my name or the name of someone around me. That campaign had me in a chokehold.
That, my friends, was marketing with soul.
And so I went searching for a video that had some of these clips online and this particular clip seemed to hit the most because I shed a happy tear watching it. After watching, come back and let’s dig into how we killed marketing and made it so soulless and linear.
Marketing Is Culture. When Culture Dies, What Remains?
Yes, distribution channels have evolved. Yes, we have new platforms and technologies. Shouldn’t this encourage creativity and enable virality as against stifling it?
Marketing at its core is culture.
Just like how a house becomes a home when it embodies the personality of the people living in it, marketing becomes culture when it embodies the soul of the people it’s meant to serve.
And when the soul of a people, their culture dies, what really remains?
Why should the advancement of technology strip away the emotional connection that marketing should build?
Why should every single campaign be reduced to lead generation alone?
Why have focus groups and core market research become extinct practices, dying a slow, natural death?
I know what you’re thinking. A lot of you marketing folks and new-age founders who’ve never worked with legacy companies are reading this like:
“Huh? You’re saying we should pay a research agency or commission an internal user research team to assemble focus groups, read video scripts, elicit reactions, and THEN determine which videos to shoot before launching a campaign?”
YES!!!
THAT IS HOW IT IS DONE. THAT IS HOW IT SHOULD BE DONE.
And if technological advancements have changed anything, it’s that those focus groups can now happen on a virtual Google Meet. The method evolves. The principle doesn’t.
A/B tests are only 10% of market research and should be done AFTER the core research process. But that’s a story for another day.
Speaking of Doing Things Right…
While we’re on the topic of all of us collectively murdering marketing, let me tell you about something that gives me hope.
The team at TEMSI, a talent accelerator and insights platform dedicated to empowering the next generation of African tech marketers, just launched the Tech Marketing Pulse 2025 Survey.
This is their annual research project that brings together the voices of marketers across Africa and this year, they’re expanding to include freelancers, founders, investors, and marketing teams. Because telling a complete story requires hearing from everyone in the ecosystem.
This is exactly the kind of research-driven, insight-focused work that marketing desperately needs right now.
For founders, the report offers an inside look into how leading startups and scaleups are building marketing teams, driving brand growth, and attracting top talent.
For investors, it provides a data-driven perspective on how marketing innovation and storytelling are shaping business performance across key African markets.
For marketers like us? It’s a mirror. A way to see where we stand, what’s working, and what needs to change.
You can check out last year’s Tech Marketing Pulse 2024 Report to get a sense of the insights and impact that came out of the project.
And if you want to add your voice to this year’s report,
Take the survey by clicking on the link below;
Your experiences and perspectives matter and they could shape how the industry evolves.
This is the kind of foundational work that can help us rebuild what we’ve lost. So let’s support it.
So Why Has Marketing Died a Natural Death in Our Generation?
Let me start from the root causes. The structural failures in the corporate world that have led to the murder of marketing and growth.
This is going to sting.
1. The Education Problem: We’re All the Blind Leading the Blind
How many secondary schools and universities; public or private have adjusted their curricula to suit the current job market and knowledge needs?
Where can one get a proper degree in:
- Digital marketing
- Product management
- Entrepreneurship and tech leadership
- Technical human resources
Nowhere. Or at least, nowhere substantial with an end-to-end structure.
While we’re lamenting that marketing has lost its soul, we need to acknowledge that marketing doesn’t work in silos. There are multiple stakeholders and decision-makers who end up having the final say.
And most of those people? They have absolutely no idea what they’re doing.
Most of us stumbled into our current roles. Even those who studied marketing have now stumbled into it like it was from outer space, with little to no relatability to what they were taught in school.
Most CEOs have no idea what the job description of a CEO actually entails and go about doing “oga-led marketing,” insulting professionals along the way because “na me be founder.”
Worst of all? There are no core Learning & Development (L&D) structures to ensure employees get the right training for every stage of their careers.
Why? Because “if we pay for training, they’ll leave us and go to another company.”
This silly, short-sighted attitude is killing businesses.
We are all the blind leading the blind. And a lack of structured learning has made us unaware of the very foundation for success in our respective fields.
It’s one of the reasons I want to retire and become an adjunct lecturer in a business school someday. I want to contribute to advancing education by helping revamp its core structure for the next generation.
Yes, things will change. But how will they build when there’s no foundation?
2. Regulatory Madness: The Agencies Killing What They Were Built to Protect
We don’t call this out enough, but the regulatory bodies in the marketing sector are on a madman’s rant, ensuring that marketing is completely dead and buried.
Government agencies that were established to enable growth have turned into Peter the Tax Collector, only interested in fining marketing professionals and organizations while charging unrealistic amounts for courses that have absolutely no value.
It’s a shame. The decay these agencies have reduced themselves to is embarrassing.
I recently saw the curriculum of one of them and hissed in utter disgust at the illiterate madness they claim is aimed at educating marketing professionals.
And the policies they churn out? Completely cut off from societal, technological, and market realities. Lacking any form of nuance.
Agencies that should be creating policies to protect individuals and organizations from dubious behavior have now reduced themselves to witch hunting companies and bullying them into paying millions for not submitting their social media calendar before posting.
It is a shameful circus show, and it needs to be addressed.
3. Our Unwillingness to Actually Sit Down and Study
We could blame everyone else for the death of marketing and creativity in our sector.
But at the end of the day, the onus falls on us to chase and attain excellence in any and every way possible.
A wise man once said: “Whatever you want to hide from a Black man, write it down.”
And that is so, so true.
As a generation and as a people, we have grown averse to education despite being the most advantaged generation in terms of access to free information and learning.
A lot of us have lost the zeal to:
- Pick up a book and read
- Read the newspaper
- Listen to the news
- Research a topic or even verify a claim
We have outsourced our brains to the streets of Twitter, TikTok, and AI so much so that we’ve grown extremely deficient in critical thinking.
We spend hours daily doom-scrolling utter rubbish, with little to no zeal to dedicate even one hour a day to studying our craft and the world in general.
It’s safe to say that despite our access to education, we are slowly becoming the most illiterate generation on planet Earth. And it’s getting alarming.
When I say education, I mean education in EVERYTHING:
- Life
- Religion
- Health
- Innovation
- Our line of work
- Everything
We’re at an all-time low when it comes to research, personal development, and upskilling.
Despite seeing every part of the world from our phone screens, we still think like we’ve yet to experience electricity for the first time.
4. The Get-Rich-Quick Scheme That Has Hijacked Marketing
Organizations have now adopted a desperate approach that has reduced marketing to a frantic race: “Who can onboard customers the fastest?”
Only lead generation matters.
We’ve forgotten that awareness done well and consideration done well will convert better because of the level of connection they build.
We’re now plagued with systems where:
- Teams work in silos and on sprints, only aiming to be fast-paced
- Entire organizations don’t educate employees on how each person’s KPI connects to the next
- Working like a well-oiled engine and being jointly responsible for growth is now a foreign concept
This is the only reason a product manager would tell a marketing manager: “Your KPI does not concern me.”
We’ve niched things up so much that people now have a narrow outlook on what work and cross-functional collaboration should be.
Moreover, if founders and C-suite execs sit down and decide which products and features to build without the right data backing it up, how will they justify the build without customers trooping in per millisecond?
This is why they’re stuck in the lead generation cycle for years and years on end, forgetting that soulless marketing only brings short-term loyalty.
The result of all these structural failures?
- Societal decay
- Less and less creativity
- The death of marketing
- The lost skill of building beloved brands
Marketing campaigns today rarely make us feel anything. They don’t create culture. They don’t inspire connection.
They just exist. And then they’re forgotten.
Just like a house that doesn’t feel like home, marketing without a soul is just……there. Functional at best. Empty at worst.
This Is a Wake-Up Call (For All of Us, Me Included)
We need to do better. Be better. Aim for excellence, not by mouth, not by LinkedIn thought leadership posts or Twitter hot takes, but by actually doing our bit to resuscitate culture and the soul of marketing.
Because marketing done right:
- Makes us all smile
- Makes us all connect
- Makes us all more fulfilled
- Makes us all more human
And honestly? That’s what the world needs right now.
Not another lead generation campaign. Not another growth hack.
But marketing that feels like something. Marketing that builds beloved brands. Marketing that creates culture.
Marketing with soul.
If you’re reading this and feeling called out, good. I’m calling myself out too.
Let’s commit to:
- Educating ourselves relentlessly. Read books. Study campaigns. Understand human psychology. Support research initiatives like the Tech Marketing Pulse Survey.
- Pushing back against regulatory nonsense. Advocate for policies that actually help the industry grow instead of stifling it.
- Demanding better from our organizations. Cross-functional collaboration isn’t optional. It’s essential.
- Creating marketing that connects. Not just marketing that converts.
Because at the end of the day, beloved brands aren’t built on lead generation alone.
They’re built on connection. Culture. Soul.
And it’s time we brought that back.
One Last Thing
Remember how I told you about Lola’s home last week? How it embodied her personality and made me feel something the moment I walked in?
That’s what marketing used to do. And that’s what it can do again.
Whether you’re building a home or building a brand, the principle is the same:
Authenticity matters.
Soul matters.
Connection matters.
So let’s stop building houses and start building homes.
Let’s stop creating campaigns and start creating culture.
Let’s bring the soul back.
What do you think? Has marketing lost its soul, or am I being too nostalgic?
Reply to this email and let me know. I genuinely want to hear your thoughts because if we’re going to fix this, we need to do it together.
Love, light, and everything in between,
The Tochy of Tochy’s POV
P.S. Next week, I’m diving into something lighter (I promise). We’ve had heavy conversations two weeks in a row, and we all need a breather. Stay tuned.
P.P.S. To everyone who sent me messages about the Platform Mastery video and Lola’s home story: Thank you. Your responses remind me why I do this work. Keep them coming.