What sort of role does kindness play in marketing and corporate communications?
That question popped into my head when I noticed that this week marks World Kindness Day, held on Nov. 13. It’s a day devoted to celebrating compassion and goodness.
This is also the season when many companies weave messages of kindness into their campaigns. Feel-good promotions show connection instead of consumption, tie a brand purpose to social impact and push acts of generosity.
That’s all fine. But kindness can play a far greater role in the way that organizations reach out to their audiences.
It’s not the type that I saw touted in one article for a business publication, which talked about “crushing” and “vaporizing” the competition through customer service kindness. For one, those terms aren’t very, well, kind. And nothing against customer service reps, but scripted empathy often comes across as phony.
Kindness shouldn’t be seen as a competitive weapon or even as a strategy to deploy. It’s not about positioning or persuading, but about principle – a basic virtue.
In marketing and communications, kindness can foster goodwill and credibility because it’s human. Consider just six ways that comes through in everyday copywriting.
1. Be crystal clear
Write as if you’re speaking to a real person, not a faceless audience. Avoid jargon, buzzwords, legalese, acronyms, brand-speak, corporate-speak, euphemisms that obscure, stiff phrasing and needlessly complex sentence structures. Communicate as though you care about being understood, not just about sounding smart or impressive.
- Kind:Showing consideration for your audience’s time and attention.
- Unkind: Using dense language that makes them labour to get it and creates a distance.
2. Drill down
Go beyond the “what” of a matter, to get at the “so what”, “why” and “how”.Whether you’re talking about an app, a health issue or an organizational change, provide context and actionable advice.
- Kind:Anticipating what your audience needs, and helping them make sense of the information and apply it meaningfully.
- Unkind: Leaving them guessing and feeling unsupported.
3. Listen and respond
Whether through feedback forms, social media or direct channels, acknowledge questions or concerns. Reply promptly in a way that makes audiences feel heard and respected.
- Kind: Expressing that their voices matter.
- Unkind: Making them feel like metrics, not people.
4. Be transparent.
Not all news is good news. Being open and honest is better than the sugarcoating that can feel patronizing.
- Kind:Demonstrating that you value your audience’s right to know.
- Unkind: Hiding behind spin.
5. Make creativity count
I love cool creative campaigns that lift brands or spark awareness. In more routine communications, though, creativity isn’t just wordplay and wit. And it’s definitely not about showing off. Audiences come first, so use creativity to serve them by finding fresh ways to engage and make your messages pop.
- Kind: Being clever in a purposeful way to illuminate or delight.
- Unkind: Prioritizing style over substance.
6. Stay consistent
Audiences want to know they can depend on you, not just in what you deliver, but in how you communicate. Whether it’s your messaging, tone or values, consistency underscores that you’re genuine and reliable.
- Kind:Showing that you mean what you say, across channels and over time.
- Unkind: Sending mixed messages that create confusion and make people question your sincerity.
It’s humanity, not a tactic
These are all just best practices, but seeing them through the kindness lens can help you apply them more deliberately and consistently. In talking to stakeholders – as well as to colleagues, friends or family – kindness isn’t a tactic. It’s simple humanity.
As a bonus, it’s good for us. We often think of health, wealth, social bonds and personal growth as major contributors to well-being, and they are. But so is the spirit of kindness. It’s measurable too.
“Happiness is rooted in…kindness,” says Jeffrey Sachs, a founding editor of the World Happiness Report and president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
The latest version of the report, with research from Gallup, looked at 147 countries and found a link between overall happiness and the extent of community thoughtfulness and helpfulness. (The top four nations in the list: Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden. Canada ranked 18th.)
There’s room for more kindness across our daily lives, and communications plays a major part.
Too much of communications nowadays feels inauthentic or rude: the cheerful chatbot, the abrupt email, the smarmy social media post, the robotic corporate response, the hollow apology. Not to mention the messages that read like they were crafted by AI rather than a person with a pulse.
At both the organizational and interpersonal levels, kindness may start as a word choice, but it resonates as something that can build trust and strengthen bonds. We could all use more of it.
Stuart Foxman is a Toronto-based freelance writer, who helps clients’ products, services, ideas and organizations to come alive. Connect with me here on LinkedIn, or check me out at foxmancommunications.com where I share these blogs too. More original posts coming regularly about communications, information, motivation, writing, branding, creativity, media, marketing, persuasion, messages, learning, etc.
November 12, 2025