The tech is dazzling. The tags say “AI-ready.” Scale feels limitless. Yet one question should stop every F500 marketer mid-demo: Will this help us target more efficiently—or be invited back, again and again, into someone’s life?
“Share of Life” is the bar. Not just share of voice or market, but a sustained, welcomed presence in the rhythms, rituals, and decisions of customers’ everyday lives. It’s the entrancing relationship—the kind that blends utility and emotion so well that the brand becomes an instinct, not an interruption.
Below is a provocation and a practical path for CMOs and marketing organizations who want to trade a little adrenaline for a lot of endurance.
Why reach is cheap and relationship is rare
Technology has demolished distribution frictions. Anyone can “find” a prospect. Very few can matter to a person repeatedly and on purpose.
Optimization breeds sameness. When everyone optimizes for the same click-through rate, the experience converges. Relationship is now the only durable differentiation.
Trust is the new constraint. With AI intermediating discovery and evaluation, brands win not by shouting louder, but by being the entity algorithms prefer to surface because customers prefer to stick around.
What an “entrancing relationship” actually is
Think of it as three forces that reinforce each other over time:
Delight – Small, unexpected moments that feel made-for-me.
Trust – Predictable delivery + transparent intent + respectful use of data.
Anticipation – The brand reliably shows up with what I want before I have to search.
When these show up consistently, the customer’s mental model changes from “Should I choose you?” to “Why would I switch?”.
Five strategic shifts to build Share of Life
From Campaigns to Companionship Campaigns conclude; companionship compounds. Move from episodic pushes to ongoing programs that solve recurring jobs-to-be-done. Think memberships, not bursts. Think rituals, not flights.
From Moments to Routines Win the slot in the day (morning commute, midweek meal, end-of-quarter planning) rather than the slot on a media plan. If you can’t name the routine, you can’t own it.
From Segments to Living Personas Static segments are too blunt for an AI-shaped world. Maintain living personas that adapt with signals: context, intent, and life events. Your targeting should age, graduate, move, and change jobs with the customer.
From Consent as Legal to Consent as Design Treat consent as a value exchange you design into your product and content, not a compliance checkbox. Make “share more with us” feel like “get more from us,” because it genuinely is.
From Optimization to Orchestration Stop optimizing isolated interactions; start orchestrating sequences that feel purposeful end-to-end. Each touch should set up the next, like a score—not a playlist of disconnected hits
The “Entrancement Formula” (workable, not mystical)
Entrancement = (Relevance × Rhythm × Reciprocity) – Friction
Relevance: How tightly you match context and intent.
Rhythm: How well you map to existing routines (time, place, emotional state).
Reciprocity: The felt fairness of the value exchange (data for benefit, attention for outcome).
Friction: Cognitive load, latency, confusion, and any sense of manipulation.
You don’t need to be perfect on all four; you need to be consistently good on three and relentlessly remove the fourth.
A 90-day plan to start compounding
Days 1–30: Diagnose
List your top five customer routines you believe you serve. Validate with customers.
Audit the top 10 touchpoints in those routines for friction and reciprocity.
Establish a baseline Relationship Scorecard: Ritual Adoption, Anticipatory Accuracy, Trust Delta, Time to Next Voluntary Interaction.
Days 31–60: Design
Choose one routine and build a service loop: signal → response → follow-through → thank-you/next.
Ship one anticipatory feature (e.g., refill nudge, content pre-load, scheduling assist) that removes a task the customer usually does.
Make consent delightful: plain-language preferences + immediate, visible benefit.
Days 61–90: Orchestrate
Connect media to membership: ads invite into a continuity (newsletter with utility, community, tool), not a one-off landing page.
Launch relationship experiments: test for shorter Time to Next Voluntary Interaction, not just CTR.
Publish the Trust Ledger update—what you learned, what you changed—so customers see the loop close.
Questions every F500 marketing org should be able to answer—today
Which daily/weekly routines do we credibly support—and how do we know?
What % of our interactions are customer-initiated (voluntary) vs. paid re-acquisition?
Where do we anticipate needs versus merely react?
How easy is it for a customer to change their mind—preferences, channels, frequency—and immediately see the effect?
Which KPI would still look healthy if we stopped buying media for 30 days?
What is our narrative of help (not hype) in a customer’s life—and is it consistent across sales, service, and product?
Where does AI increase meaning, not just speed?
What is the hardest friction we’ve removed in the last quarter?
How do we reward attention with progress, not just points?
If a loyal customer explained us to a friend in one sentence, would it reference a routine?
Technology is the amplifier, not the song.
Yes, invest in the stack. Embrace AI, new platforms, and the pipes that make precision possible. But treat technology as a force multiplier for relationship, not a substitute for it. The goal isn’t to reach more people faster; it’s to become the brand that earns a place—day after day—in the parts of life that matter.
