Authenticity Is Not Dead, But Automation Is Trying Very Hard to Kill It
By: N. Adam Brown, MD MBA - Founder, ABIG Health
There is a special kind of irritation that hits when your phone buzzes and you think, just for a moment, that someone needs you. Maybe it’s a colleague, a friend, or a family member. Maybe it’s news. Maybe…it’s meaningful.
But no. It’s another text message promising to “increase your revenue by 10x in four days,” or to “revolutionize your workflow with AI-powered synergy dynamics.” (If synergy dynamics is a real thing, I apologize in advance.)
And lately, my LinkedIn inbox has joined the party. Every morning I’m not met with a small parade of direct messages from people who definitely, assuredly, without question have never read my profile. The messages begin with a tone of faux familiarity:
“Hi Adam! I see you’re passionate about helping dental practices optimize chair time.”
For the record, I am not. Never have been. Never claimed to be. Not even once while sleep-deprived and delirious after a red-eye. And, I’m not a dentist, nor do I run a dental practice.
It is absurd: somewhere, a marketer thought it was using a clever tool to generate a personalized message. That tool scraped my profile, misinterpreted my work, matched me to the wrong professional category, and then proudly delivered a message to me as though we shared a deep, abiding connection around dental chair time optimization.
This is not marketing. This is spam, wearing the skin of authenticity like a Halloween costume.
And the problem is not simply that it’s annoying (though it is). The problem is that it erodes trust, and trust is the only currency that matters in sales and relationship-driven industries.
Anyone in marketing or business development knows that relationships drive deals.
People buy ideas, products, and services from people they trust. There is no AI-generated workaround for that. There is no automation hack that replaces it. There is no lead-generation drip campaign that substitutes genuine presence.
Yet we’ve entered a moment where rampant automation is pushing marketers to behave as though a clever mail-merge is the same thing as human connection.
The pitch seems to be: “Now you can personalize at scale.” But when everything is “personalized,” nothing is.
The irony is that many of these tools could be useful. The best marketing automation software can help busy professionals stay organized, follow up on warm conversations, share meaningful content, and identify where real engagement is happening.
These tools are not the enemy.
The enemy is the impulse to replace actual relationship-building with algorithmic choreography.
There are three major issues at play:
First, these messages are being sent without true targeting. If your automated outreach tool cannot clearly differentiate between a physician-entrepreneur and a dental supply chain vendor, you have a segmentation problem. And a strategy problem. And honestly, a dignity problem.
Second, the messaging is attempting to mimic intimacy without doing the work. Just because an email includes my name does not mean it is personal. Just because a message references my company’s website does not mean you understand my work. And just because a message is formatted to look like it could have been written by a human does not mean a human should hit send.
Third, the volume alone is breaking the system. In the past, when we received a standard mass marketing email, we could spot it instantly and delete it without emotional investment. It required no thought, no time, no attention. What has now changed is that messages appear tailored, which means we must stop, read, assess, and ultimately realize we were tricked into caring for five to 15 seconds. It feels manipulative — and my resentment follows. (And resentment is not a strong foundation for future business.)
As inboxes, text chains, and messaging platforms become more polluted with automated familiarity, the individuals behind the messages stop being seen as potential partners and start being identified as digital irritants. This fact is particularly true when the information contained in the email is wrong about the person, the industry, or services the target provides. People begin to block, mute, and mentally blacklist.
When that happens, a relationship that could have developed later is now permanently gone.
Marketing leaders like to talk about “top of funnel.” Yet many of these automated tools are now destroying the top of the funnel before sales even begins.
Automation has value, but it must be used with discipline. If a company or individual genuinely wants to build meaningful business relationships, they must:
Understand their audience. Actually research the human being and the company you’re talking to.
Be selective. Everyone is not a prospect. Nor should they be.
Lead with shared context. A mutual connection, a shared professional challenge, or a real conversation goes infinitely further than a scraped job title.
Build slowly. Relationships are not microwavable.
The most successful marketing strategies in professional services today are not mass campaigns, automated sequence blasts, or personalization scripts. They are based on consistent presence, thoughtful engagement, useful ideas, and deliberate trust-building over time.
In other words: authenticity still matters.
Automation is a tool.
Authenticity is a behavior.
One should support the other — not replace it.
