Belief Is Still a Human Job

HCP Associates turns 40 this year. We’ve been in business longer than the internet, longer than PowerPoint, and longer than most of the platforms our clients now swear they can’t live without. Over four decades, we’ve lived through oil spills, recessions, 9/11, housing crashes, COVID, supply-chain chaos, social media revolutions, and now the age of AI-powered advertising. Even the Super Bowl has become a showcase for AI-generated creativity. Yet here we are, because one truth never changes: companies still need to sell, and brands still need to matter.

And people still buy from people. David Ogilvy said, “good advertising does not just circulate information; it penetrates the public mind with desires and belief.”

That sentence explains the difference between tools and talent. AI can summarize, draft, optimize, and accelerate brilliantly, and we use it every day. But desire and belief come from human understanding, from empathy, experience, and judgment. A thank-you card still matters. Shaking a client’s hand when you deliver the final product still matters. Answering the phone when something goes sideways still matters. Technology made everything faster; it did not make everything more meaningful.

We think of a business like a football team. Sales is the quarterback. Marketing is the offensive line, protecting the brand, creating the openings, and giving the play a chance to work. For forty seasons, we’ve been on that line, adapting the playbook from fax machines to websites to social and AI copilots. The gear changed; the job never did: help good companies tell the truth about why they matter.

Resiliency isn’t software. It’s relationships. It’s knowing the hotel GM by name after an oil spill, calling reporters at midnight during a hurricane, rewriting campaigns during COVID so a restaurant could survive, admitting when an idea isn’t ready, and fixing it before the client asks. Those moments live in people, not in the cloud.

After forty years, we believe this more than ever: sales and marketing never give up. AI will make us quicker and smarter, and we welcome that. But it will never replace the part of this business that runs on trust and creativity with a pulse. So, we keep blocking, keep throwing, keep showing up with a handshake and a better idea. Because technology is a tool, not the author of belief. AI writes words. People write meaning.

And by the way, if you want a real cup of coffee and a conversation with someone who listens, stop by our offices anytime.

That’s who we’ve been since 1986, and that’s who we’ll be for the next forty. Game on!