If you are an investor or web thinker, the discussions over at AVC on data as the top of the tech stack have been as good as they get lately. Check them out here and here if the topic grabs you.

My takeaway is–how does human touch factor into all of this?

How does our need for emotional connection through objects and ideas map to a changing reality where commerce and logistics are pipes that appear smarter than the populations they serve?

In some sense, the future is already here once we’ve wired the web as a tool for both customer/sentiment match and even more astounding, wired people as services into a click on a phone.

Amazing actually if you let your imagination run with this.

My take is that the corralling of complexity on the data side mirrors a drive for emotional clarity and connection on the other.  And while the tech stack grows deeper and cleaner, how we as people and consumers act remains invariably messy and random. In fact we become more needy for emotional objects we can hold onto.

I’ve been looking to Facebook for understanding.

As much as Twitter is the epitome of real time information, Facebook is at its core an emotional net more than a social one.

And both Twitter and Facebook are the apex of network smarts hosting—and to some degree capitalizing-the mess  and mass of human emotions that live on them.

Facebook embraces this to a t wiring in emotions as its core dynamic.

It’s a global runway of emotional shorts.

Breakups. Marriages. Transgender journeys. Bar Mitzvahs. Soccer tournaments.

Bill Maher  next to a video of a tabby cat playing in a breadbox trending at over 14m views.

Each of us needs to be identified by emotion snapshots—be it our kids or pets, wine bottle labels, travel shots. A global population of thankful, cute loving, humble and happy humanity.

Years ago I wrote a post how everyone is always happy and thin on Facebook. It was more cheeky than insightful in retrospect.

Now I realize that people—humanity itself–simply needs this view of ourselves. It’s not reality but it is key to how we view ourselves and deal with the rigors of reality itself. I don’t know if this is in response to a data driven pipes that drive our world or simply because now we have platforms to express ourselves on.

No matter as it feels right.

I’ve always been a social behaviorist when it comes to marketing, digging into the intersection of people, the act of wanting something and the transaction.

I’m realizing that we need to push this further.

We need to rethink  the ideas of cause-based or community-based  brands. We need to strip back our positioning and customer understanding to our emotional touch points. To individual aspirations as key.

If you have a food brand based on healthy, you need to rethink this as your brand representing an approach, and find in it the core wants and aspirations of the customer who will embrace it as their own.

If you are an org addressing the lobby for GMO, you best stop lecturing down and find the language to make this something enthusiast feel not understand. This lobby especially has a lot to learn from the videos of animal rescue organizations.

I’m realizing that I’m doing this already putting some teeth into my gut reactions that brands actually do live in the aspirations of your customers. In their aspirations to embrace your product as their own.

I blogged the other day about how a data driven world owned by the large incumbents,  stacked the deck against the small entrepreneur.

I still believe this has merit but I also know that smart pipes are simply plumbing. The brand platforms that are being built today will win, not on the plumbing alone, but on capturing that key emotional need of people. Billions of them.

Understanding that need of people to feel good about the services they use, the companies they invest in, the food we eat and the stores or online sites we purchase from. To be delighted by our actions.

Making it simple. Making it real. Respecting the messy and needy nature of people—ala the Facebook effect—is key.

It’s as hard to capture as it is to build the networks it lives on.

It makes us all equal as we are all experts in what feels right and draws us in.

Try this on.

Take a look at your own behaviors and then deconstruct you own company’s brand. See whether you are still pushing out rather than understanding how to let it come to you.

There is an aha here. I guarantee it.