It’s 2018. You open Instagram, coffee in hand, and there he is: a guy on a yacht. Sunglasses on, arm draped over the railing, telling you this life could be yours. All you have to do is buy his course. Spots are limited. The price goes up at midnight. So, are you someone who takes action, or someone who stays stuck?
That was the year I walked into the copywriting world. I didn’t have a name for what I was seeing yet – I just knew it seemed to work, so I leaned into all of it. The fake scarcity, the “only three spots left” when there were very clearly more than three spots, the this-or-that framing that made saying no feel like a personality flaw. I learned the playbook, and I used it.
Then, somewhere deep in my gut, I started to feel the ick.
I couldn’t explain it at first. Every time I wrote a countdown timer or a “this disappears forever” line, something in me flinched. Looking back, that ick was my gut and my morals tapping me on the shoulder. There was something sneakily manipulative going on, and part of me knew it before the rest of me caught up.
I have zero shame about that chapter. Honestly, I’m grateful for it because it became the clearest guiding light I’ve ever had for what I did not want to do, and it’s a big part of why Mejia Marketing exists today.
What is “Bro Marketing” Anyway?
Bro marketing is selling that runs on pressure instead of persuasion. It takes normal human decision shortcuts, like scarcity, urgency, social proof and authority, and uses them to rush people past their own judgment. Messaging strategist Dr. Michelle Mazur describes it as using psychological triggers to switch off critical thinking and remove real consent so people buy.
Despite the name, it isn’t about gender. Women do it, men do it, and plenty of well-meaning business owners do it without realizing. Mazur explains the “bro” label as a nod to where the tactics were popularized: mostly men teaching everyone else in online business how to use them, because they worked.
You’ve seen it. Probably this week. It usually looks something like this:
- Fake scarcity, like “only 3 spots left” on an offer that never actually sells out
- Countdown timers that mysteriously reset every time you refresh the page
- Lifestyle flexing: the rented Lambo, the borrowed yacht, the income screenshot cropped just so
- This-or-that framing that makes saying no feel like admitting you’re lazy
- Big promises with no proof, and testimonials shared without the client’s permission
- Payment plans with a quiet markup, which Content Queen Mariah points out can turn a $6,000 service into a $7,200 one
Where It Came From
The triggers themselves aren’t new. Psychologist Robert Cialdini mapped them back in 1984 in his book Influence. Our brains rely on these shortcuts every day so we don’t have to think through every tiny decision. On their own, they’re neutral. Bro marketing is what happens when someone turns them into a weapon.
When It Took Off
The 2010s handed bro marketing everything it needed: cheap Facebook ads, automated email funnels, “free” webinars and Instagram’s highlight-reel culture. Online courses and info products exploded, and the formula got copied and pasted across every niche. Writing in 2018, Amanda Bond of The Ad Strategist described an industry that went from a couple of people shouting about internet marketing tactics in 2011 to thousands fighting over the same ad space and the same wallets. As ThoughtLab puts it, social media rewarded charisma over credibility, and for a while, that was enough.
The Inevitable Fall of Bro Marketing
Here’s the thing about pressure tactics: they wear out. Bond’s 2018 piece makes the case with plain math. She shares a friend’s numbers from a $297 offer: in 2016, cheap leads and a 6% conversion rate earned almost 12 dollars for every ad dollar spent. A couple of years later, leads cost three times as much, conversions dropped to 1%, and the same funnel was losing money. The playbook didn’t change – the audience did.
People got wise. Once you’ve seen the timer reset, you can’t unsee it. Once you’ve learned the yacht was a rental, the whole pitch falls apart.
And now we’re in the age of AI, where anyone can churn out a slick sales page or a hundred hooks before lunch. You’d think that would make hype even easier, but instead, it’s made something else rare: a real human with real experience, saying something true. When polished is cheap, real is what stands out. People want to know there’s an actual person behind the business who knows their stuff and cares whether it works.
Turns Out, Everyone Else Got the Ick Too
It wasn’t just me squirming at my keyboard… buyers started feeling it as well.
Mazur makes a point that stuck with me: bro marketing doesn’t just take your money, it takes your self-trust. You buy the thing in a panic, it doesn’t deliver, and you end up blaming yourself for falling for it. Do that to someone enough times and they stop believing anything you say.
ThoughtLab describes the same shift from the other side. Audiences have watched gurus quietly rebrand after a course flops and post income screenshots cropped to hide the refunds. Gen Z in particular has little patience for alpha-male posturing, and older buyers are just plain tired of being yelled at.
So the influencers still running the 2018 playbook are slipping. The unfollows pile up, the unsubscribes roll in, and the yacht guy? He’s become a meme instead of a role model. Mazur’s advice to buyers is refreshingly simple: if someone’s marketing makes you feel guilt, shame or panic, stop giving them your attention, and definitely stop giving them your money.
How I Found My Way Out
Cue my own little plot twist.
Once I finally named the ick, I couldn’t keep writing around it. So I stopped. I traded the countdown timers for clear explanations, the fake scarcity for honest timelines, and the “act now or regret it forever” lines for words I’d be comfortable saying to someone’s face.
Along the way, I kept noticing who was getting hurt the most by all that noise: small business owners. The plumber, the physio clinic, the family-run shop. People with real customers and real bills, who were being told they needed a 12-step funnel and a viral hook just to survive. Most of them didn’t need any of that. They needed someone to tell them the truth and then do the work.
That’s who I’ve built my career around. I’ve worked with hundreds of businesses over the years, and today Mejia Marketing focuses on three things: websites, SEO and content writing. No hype, no smoke, no mirrors. Just honest marketing for people who are too busy running their business to decode a guru’s sales page.
What Small Businesses Actually Need
While the bros were busy shouting over each other, something quieter was growing in the background. ThoughtLab’s Paul Kiernan calls them the anti-bros, and I love his description of them as “the weirdos who lead with value instead of volume.”
This well-written article describes these people as the calm experts, the introverts who’d rather write than pitch, the people who don’t need a dozen funnel stages to sell something that genuinely helps. They don’t overpromise. They show up consistently, explain things clearly, and tell the truth even when it’s inconvenient. They aren’t building empires overnight. They’re building credibility, slowly and steadily.
Kiernan’s big point is that authority used to look loud: big follower counts, aggressive offers, the flashiest hook. Now it looks quiet. It’s earned in thoughtful replies, long-form articles and a simple screen share that shows exactly how a result happened. And that slower, more honest approach is the one that actually converts.
My favourite part of the article is this:
“People aren’t just buying a product anymore. They’re buying the person behind it. And they’re asking different questions:
- Do you sound like a human?
- Are you saying something real?
- Do you actually care if it works for me?
Bro marketing fails that test almost instantly. The anti-bros pass without even trying, not because they out-hustled anyone, but because they stopped pretending.”
Mic drop. (Seriously, read that article by Paul Kiernan – it’s so good.)
What That Looks Like for a Small Business
You don’t need flash. You need follow-through. In practice, that usually means:
- A website that clearly explains what you do, who it’s for and what it costs (or how pricing works)
- SEO and AI Search that helps the right people find you when they’re already looking for what you offer
- Content that answers your customers’ real questions, in plain language, without a timer attached
- Honest expectations about timelines and results, even when the truthful answer is “it takes a few months”
- Testimonials shared with permission, and promises you can actually keep
None of that is glamorous. All of it works. That’s the quiet secret the yacht guy never mentioned.
You Don’t Need a Funnel (Or a Yacht)
You don’t need a funnel with 12 moving parts. You don’t need to be loud. You don’t need to fake scarcity, flex a rented car or make anyone feel small so they’ll buy from you. If you’ve ever felt the ick scrolling past a guru’s sales pitch, trust it. Your gut is smarter than any countdown timer.
If you’re a small business owner who feels confused, overwhelmed or a little burned by all the noise, you’re in the right place. At Mejia Marketing, we build websites, SEO and content that help the right customers find you and trust you, without the hype.
No pressure. No timer. When you’re ready, we’ll be here.