Phil Treagus-Evans is a leading voice in people-centred marketing and the CEO and co-founder of Giraffe Social, a UK-based social media agency helping brands thrive through authenticity and empathy. He is also the bestselling author of Human First Marketing: The Art of Being Seen, Trusted and Remembered, which explores how brands can connect with audiences through genuine human understanding rather than trends or algorithms. With years of hands-on experience guiding organisations to create meaningful digital relationships, Phil blends marketing strategy with a deep respect for human psychology and trust. His insights have helped brands worldwide embrace purpose-driven storytelling and community-led growth. Passionate about redefining marketing for the modern age, Phil continues to inspire businesses to lead with heart.

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What if your marketing remembered the most important thing—humans?

In this powerful episode of Talking with the Experts: Business Insights, host Rose Davidson interviews Phil Treagus-Evans, the CEO and co-founder of Giraffe Social and bestselling author of Human First Marketing: The Art of Being Seen, Trusted and Remembered.

Phil shares how marketing has become overly focused on clicks and conversions—and what it looks like when brands return to their roots: people. Through his Human First Marketing philosophy, he explains how empathy, storytelling, and authentic connection can reshape the future of business.

Listeners will discover:

• What “human first” really means in a digital age.
• Why empathy and emotional resonance create loyal customers.
• How to apply small, practical changes to make your marketing more authentic.

Whether you’re a coach, entrepreneur, or creative leader, this episode will help you reconnect with your audience on a human level—and rediscover the joy of meaningful marketing.

✨ Three Key Takeaways

1. Understand the core principles of Human First Marketing and why empathy matters more than ever.
2. Learn how authentic connection builds stronger, longer-lasting customer trust.
3. Discover simple, actionable ways to start implementing human-centric marketing today.

• Phil explains that he stumbled into marketing through entrepreneurship rather than choosing it deliberately, starting a social media agency with a friend 13-14 years ago when businesses were just beginning to use social media.
• Human-first marketing is defined as putting people back at the heart of marketing strategies by focusing on the humans behind businesses including teams, boards, founders, and customers rather than reducing them to data points.
• Giraffe Social has achieved the best results for clients when they front and center the people behind the business, demonstrating that marketing should be one group of people providing value to another group of people.
• AI has become fuel on the fire for poor marketing practices by allowing businesses to scale bad content from one poor post to 50 poor posts, creating oversaturation with homogenized content that doesn’t register with consumers.
• In a world of AI, humanity serves as the competitive edge for marketers seeking differentiation, as focusing on people rather than scaling nonsense content helps businesses stand out from competitors.
• Phil advocates for strategic AI use where users train custom systems to understand their tone of voice and beliefs while providing insights and opinions, rather than lazily asking AI to write generic posts without personal input.
• Writing serves as an important practice that forces individuals to question their beliefs and fine-tune opinions, as demonstrated when Phil organized chaotic thoughts into a coherent framework while writing his book.
• Evidence from working with hundreds of brands shows that human-first strategies like founder-led business approaches and employee advocacy create personal brands that cut through AI content and the sea of sameness.
• Businesses should include more real faces in their marketing and social media posts rather than artificially created faces or stock images, as Instagram content with human faces receives 38 times more engagement due to the brain’s fusiform face area that detects faces.
• Authenticity in marketing means being yourself and presenting a less polished version, which Phil demonstrated by sharing his book-writing journey including word counts, struggles, and imposter syndrome on LinkedIn.
• Phil’s book became a bestseller on the first day and reached number one in five out of six categories because people bought into him and his journey rather than just the book, feeling ownership over the process he shared.
• Businesses should show spontaneous photos of staff members working at desks, having coffee, or by drink fountains with accompanying words rather than hiding employees or using stock photos of CEOs.
• The book “Human First Marketing” is structured with the first half covering principles, theory, psychology, and philosophy, while the second half provides practical applications people can implement immediately to see results.
• Phil’s book and services can be found on LinkedIn and at giraffesocialmedia.co.uk, with the book serving as his main promotional focus.