“I gave you everything you ever wanted, / It wasn’t what you wanted.” — Lyric from “So Cruel”, U2
Starbucks made a rational, data-backed move: Customers wanted convenience – faster service and shorter lines. So, Starbucks rolled out remote ordering.
It worked.
- Orders increased.
- Lines shortened.
- The app became indispensable.
But something else happened, quietly and destructively: People stopped coming in. They stopped hanging around. And they never ordered second or third cups or snacks.
The café experience – designed for lingering, working, connecting – was replaced by transactional efficiency. One visit. One drink. One sale.
Starbucks industrialized – they optimized for efficiency and, in the bargain, degraded the experience. And with it went:
- Per-visit revenue
- Add-on sales
- Brand warmth
- Loyalty
Now they’re advertising free refills – an incentive to get people to stay. They’re trying to rebuild the deeper engagement they inadvertently destroyed.
The B2B Corollary: Industrialized Marketing and the Loss of Experience
Starbucks could have learned how to industrialize from B2B marketing, where it’s been happening for 20 years.
In B2B, we have been chasing more efficient routes to “deals”, rather than better paths to valuable customer relationships:
- Content traps
- Conversion optimization
- Lead scoring
- Content syndication
- MQL Waterfalls
- High-volume email cadences
- Scaled SDR outreach
And like Starbucks, we told ourselves we were giving buyers what they wanted:
- Speed
- Information on demand
- Self-service
But what we were really doing was luring them in so we could chase them down. The notion of actually serving the buyer was a secondary consideration – if it was a consideration at all.
Marketing got industrialized. We turned marketing into a machine designed to manufacture MQLs, not moments of insight or emotional connection.
Our drive-through lanes were humming, but the cafés were empty.
This shift hollowed out the B2B experience:
- We optimized for quantity over connection
- We measured touchpoints instead of engagement
- We forgot that preference isn’t downloaded – it’s developed
What We Lost in the Push for Productivity
When marketing became a production line, we lost:
- The art of connection
- The emotional resonance of brand
- The slow-building trust that turns interest into intention
Just like Starbucks discovered: you can fulfill the immediate desire and destroy the long-term relationship in the same move.
The Path Forward: AI-Industrialize, Re-Humanize
To rebuild experience in B2B, we have to:
- Create digital spaces that invite buyers to linger, not just transact – with LLMs, they won’t need us for the information alone
- Measure the depth of engagement, not just the number of leads
- Treat marketing as the steward of affinity, not just – or primarily – pipeline velocity
We need to be curators, guides, educators – not just operators of a lead factory.
The Post-Industrial Opportunity: Automate What Should Be Automated. Humanize What Matters.
The lesson isn’t that we should reject convenience or stop using automation. Quite the opposite.
We now have the ability — thanks to AI — to deliver timely, relevant messages to exactly the right people with a level of precision and scale we’ve never had before. And we can do it without consuming all of a marketer’s time or creative bandwidth.
This is what makes the post-industrial phase different. It doesn’t just automate the pipeline — it liberates the people.
It’s not about turning back the clock. It’s about moving forward more wisely.
In this new phase:
- AI handles the mechanical work — targeting, sequencing, personalization, timing.
- Marketers focus on the human work — understanding their audience, crafting compelling narratives, and creating experiences that buyers want to stay for – and which build affinity.
Just like Starbucks is trying to rebuild its cafe experience around community and presence, B2B marketers now have a chance to rebuild around connection, respect, and relevance.
Not by throwing out technology. But by finally using it to its full potential:
To serve the audience, not the algorithm. To deepen engagement, not just track it. To create a space where buyers want to linger and a brand they want to linger with.
