grandma's on the line
Brought to you by The Art Of Positioning Podcast
What if your customer experience felt less like tech support… and more like talking to grandma?
Del Real’s campaign didn’t just ride on sentiment. It struck something deeper: emotional safety, cultural trust, and the kind of sprinkled humor that says, “We see you.”
The Hispanic ready-to-eat food company replaced AI with grandmas.
Their campaign? “Abuela Intelligence.”
So instead of chatbots, they gave wise, wool-knitting abuelas in a ’90s call center, ready to give advice on tacos and toxic relationships.
My favorite thing about this campaign was that, even though it was low-tech, it involved a high level of personal interaction, which is exactly what today’s market is starving for.
Because let’s face it:
Budgets are tightening. (even more)
Client loyalty is harder to earn.
And every brand is fighting to stay top-of-mind.
It only makes sense that how your brand is brand human becomes a strategic advantage.
It’s what gets people talking. It’s what builds preference, not just awareness.
It's part of what makes you feel irreplaceable, even when cheaper, flashier options show up.
But how do you humanize operations in your business?
I’m on it.
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We’re in 2025, the year when all the cool guys are slapping AI stickers and features on almost everything.
Hecks, you can ask AI to draw out a picture of your future family—partners, kids, and even a pet (yes, seriously).
Think I'd make for a badass grandma?👵
But while everyone and their evil Chihuahua are coming up with a new way to leverage AI daily, Del Real Foods quietly flipped the script.
Their "Abuela Intelligence" campaign worked because it did 3 aspects most brand operations fail at:
It replaced transactional efficiency with emotional safety. A grandma on a call doesn’t just answer questions; she makes you feel held and seen, not sold to.
It weaponized familiarity. The ‘90s call center hit nostalgic vibes where you actually spoke to real people in the same country.
The grandmas weren’t a one-off stunt. They became a repeatable system for connection.
But why should this even matter to you?
Look at it this way, making your operations more human-centric helps you:
Reduce the risk of churn
Increases and sustains high retention.
Encourage clients to refer you more (which is your highest-margin sales channel by the way, because people refer who they love, not who’s slightly better).
But you don’t need to build a fake '90s call center…or hire a bunch of grandmas to achieve this.
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Badass Tip
🦘 Marketing
Start with the phrases your target audience and clients say.
What it looks like in practice:
Pull 10 phrases from your last 3 sales calls or client DMs. Look at how they talk about their problems, not how you describe your solutions.
In some cases, you don’t necessarily have to copy and paste those exact words, but you can use them in your next homepage headline, email subject line, or social media post.
🦘 Sales
The right tone and body language communicate more than your pricing table. Instead of a boring pitch deck, make it a journey from their point A to the point B they desire.
What it looks like in practice:
Swap your first sales call from a walkthrough of your offer to a walkthrough of your process with real client examples and a story.
Use analogies. Human ones (Bonus if they’re funny, relatable, or spark familiarity).
🦘 Customer service
Automating customer support and interactions is great, but you know what’s better? Unexpected kindness; it’s “the little thoughts that count” moments. Imagine you just finished a tough project phase. Your client gets a box of cookies and a note.
No software does that. Your team does.
What it looks like in practice:
Choose one customer touchpoint, whether it’s onboarding, offboarding, or project midpoint. Send something physical or personalized at that moment. It could be a handwritten note, a voice memo, a personalized quarterly check-in video, or even a grandma-style “you got this” email.
Save big dates for your clients, think birthdays, business founding anniversaries, and milestones. Next, make it ultra personalized, build a little dossier (if you don’t have one already) on all your customers, get your team to add in this information together with reminders ahead of time, or set up a targeted automation that celebrates these moments.
🦘 HR
Culture isn’t what you post on your careers page. Read that again.
It’s how your people show up on Slack, Zoom, or at the coffee machine. Train employees on using empathy in client interactions.
What it looks like in practice:
In your hiring process, include interview questions about how the candidate approaches certain situations with clients and grade them on tone, listening skills, and how solution-focused they are.
You can also use role-play tests to train employees.
Show firsthand what you want the culture to be like. Multi-national team? No worries. Share this strategy with other heads and check in regularly that it’s staying aligned (check in with random team members, not the heads).📝 They say, “If you want people to talk, give them something to talk about.”
Every business owner is obsessed with “scaling” and “systems.” But warmth? It's underrated. It’s something to lean into. Something that builds loyalty, protects margins, secures your market share, and earns you that most powerful of all marketing weapons: word-of-mouth.
