"What if we started to be more human again?"

That question closes "Hope in Hard Questions," a 90-second ad for Anthropic's Claude that debuted earlier this summer. The spot walks through existential anxieties—"Can AI be trusted?" and "If it ends up taking, like, almost all the jobs, then what does it mean to work?"—before shifting to a more optimistic tone.

In late July, Meta ran its own techno-optimist play with "The Future is For Everyone," a 60-second spot set, oddly, to a song about the apocalypse. An unseen narrator says Meta is "doubling down" on people "because while technology will change, our intention behind it never will."

The impulse is hardly mysterious. Public sentiment on AI keeps cratering, especially around data centers, and the backlash has sparked protests targeting Big Tech. When there's an image problem, marketing gets the job of fixing it.

But tech companies aren't alone in foregrounding humanity. Garage Beer and Liquid Death released a 90-second musical satire urging audiences to send in their urine to cool AI data centers—framed, naturally, as a way to "save humanity."

Marketing experts say the turn toward explicit humanity messaging reflects the zeitgeist: the rapid push toward AI adoption and narratives of inevitability have raised bigger, more existential questions that brands now feel compelled to address.

"We're in a cultural moment where it feels like we are not in control," Megha Parikh, executive strategy director at VML, told Marketing Brew. Humanity, she added, is "a very powerful message to empower people…You are in charge of your own destiny. I think that's a really powerful cultural tension that's playing out in ad land."

Humanity as counterculture

Once you start looking, humanity commentary is easy to spot across industries. Etsy and TD Bank have built campaigns touting the human touch. Polaroid, Pinterest, and Heineken have pitched consumers on getting outside and off their devices—a direct rejection of the current technological moment.

"We are in a bit of an existential crisis as a society," said Marcus Collins, clinical assistant professor of marketing at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. That crisis, he noted, has prompted questions about what we eat, how we govern and educate, and how we use technology.

"All these things are being litigated with regard to, What does it mean for humanity?" Collins said. "So it's almost a little tone-deaf to not even have a point of view, and one would argue that the way you engage in culture is by contributing to it, and brands contribute to the cultural discourse by expressing how they see the world."

That logic drove Liquid Death and Garage Beer's joint urine-cooling spot. "There is a lot of anger and anxiety around AI and, in particular, data centers right now," Andy Pearson, VP of creative at Liquid Death, said. "So we turned it on itself and said, 'Hey, can we talk about something that everyone is talking about, but in the most Liquid Death way possible?'"

The team drew on '80s-era idealism like "Hands Across America," choosing a positive tone in a conversation dominated by negative what-ifs. To Pearson, the humanity push echoes marketers' recent obsession with authenticity—and carries the same risk of becoming an empty buzzword.

"If we're having to prove we're human, it's sort of like the real-life version of the Captcha stuff," Pearson said. "Brands are like, 'We're humans. We can pick out the two bicycles in this grid of things,' which is kind of a dark place for us to be at…we have to laugh so you don't cry."

Human touches

Some brands signal humanity through aesthetics rather than explicit messaging. Film, used by several brands in Super Bowl spots this year, is one increasingly popular choice. Others lean on handmade-feeling elements or subtler cues like color.

"The more technology becomes part of our lives, the more we revert back to the things that make us human, whether it's nature, authenticity, things that are real, and things that you can physically touch," Laurie Pressman, VP of the Pantone Color Institute, previously told Marketing Brew.

Parikh said VML clients now ask for work that feels "tactile and natural" and "imperfect." Behind-the-scenes videos showing how ads get made are also proliferating. Apple and Coinbase have both offered glimpses of the lengths creative teams go to—signaling that their brands are made by, and for, humans.

That signal can change how audiences receive the work. Ty Gates, director of communications and marketing for Mother, felt it watching the behind-the-scenes video for Coinbase's "Your Way Out" spot. "I liked it that much more because I knew there were real humans involved in making it," he said.

Collins believes any brand can join the trend—if it has something real to say. "I would say any brand can have a point of view on humanity if they have a point of view," he said. "The strongest brands transcend the category, so they're not bound by the industry they're in and what they make. Instead, they're freed by the point of view they have on the world."

Source: Marketing Brew (https://www.marketingbrew.com/stories/humanity-in-advertising-ai-distrust?utm_source=&utm_medium=syndication&utm_campaign=feed) / Source: techcrunch.com (https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/23/meta-launched-a-new-ai-optimism-ad-set-to-a-song-about-human-extinction/)