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A phenomenon is happening in corporate boardrooms. Across industries, I’ve spotted a strange (to me) strategic development: “forced joy.” Whether “moments of connection” at Starbucks, “capture joyful moments” at Tiffany & Co., or some other new policy, big companies want their people to cheer up customers in a branded way. But when the smile is compulsory and performed rather than felt natural, the cost can go beyond operational drag and reputational blips to brand burnout and employee disengagement.

Let’s look at recent examples and discuss why a forced joy policy can hurt a brand. 

• Starbucks: In Jan/Feb 2025, the coffee giant required baristas to write something on every to-go cup (positive affirmations, doodles, or even the customer’s name), as part of a branded drive for “moments of connection.” Business Insider
• Tiffany & Co. (in the comment sections): Luxury retailer Tiffany added a “behavior” for staff called “capturing joyful moments” this year. While not as public as Starbucks, online commentators saw a clear parallel as staff were expected to participate in Tiffany & Co.‘s “Tiffany Joy” app which backfired, evolving into a source of frustration as employees faced increasing pressure to engage, highlighting broader challenges in the company’s culture and sales strategy.” Business Of Fashion 

Companies in the middle have also joined this cheerleading army (sometimes called “forced positivity”), such as Walmart (behavioral standards, including “seeking” joy), Pizza Hut (micro-behaviors including “smiling”), Airbnb (mission of spreading joy), Baskin-Robbins (“dropping smiles”), and others. 

As companies mandate more joy in employee-customer interactions, it’s important to understand that an emotional performance doesn’t come cheap: 

Employee burden. The cost is paid by the employee. It’s well known that any forced emotional dissonance has a cost, contributing to employee burnout and turnover.

Erosion of Trust. If you “fake it ’til you make it” with your customers, some of them will notice and feel you’re phony. 

Brand Dilution.  If every brand is forcing joy, or using it as a performance metric, a critical element of brand differentiation is lost. The effect is more sameness rather than brand equity.* Process Inefficiency. Do you, as a service brand, mandate a scripted behavioral performance while not allowing adequate time or other process efficiencies to ensure throughput and speed? 

PR Downside. If employees feel compelled to perform joy, or if a customer reports the policy rather than a joyful intent, your public relations reps will get feedback such as, “Why would anyone hire you to do that?” and other awkward moments. Are you reading this and thinking, “but people really do love it when companies ‘inject joy’ or offer personalized connections?” I get that. But no service is a million-dollar-a-day performance unless your service processes (ex: staffing, skills, speed) have backed it up. However, if all you’re offering is a policy of joy via mission statements, performance goals, or other cheerleading obligations, then you’ve not gone deep enough. 

The lesson here: marketing + pr  = emotional & operational authenticity. 

A Deeper Joy: 

Here’s the prescription for offering meaningful customer moments: 

Operate authentically with your employees and customers. If employees can feel their own joy, humanity, authenticity, and warmth, so can customers. The brand vehicle is not positivity or smiling; the brand vehicle is the meaningfulness and human-ness. 

Invest more than “human” emotion. The staff at the sharp edges (retail, food and beverage, hotel front desk, bank tellers, field service reps, etc.) want to feel like human beings, not corporate robots following mandates. Create the emotional infrastructure to back up your performance expectations. 

Don’t ask your customer-facing teams to offer inauthentic performance. You don’t hire and train all that talent to make the customer think you care. Allow the customer-facing teams to be their actual, authentic selves. 

Measure emotional value, not actions. You don’t measure success of a show of “moments of joy” with customer visits or to-go cup purchases. You measure success by value: “Did the customer leave the exchange feeling seen?” “Did the employee leave the exchange feeling like they were able to use their gifts and skills?” 

In Conclusion:

A decade ago, a McKinsey researcher warned about over-engineering the customer experience: “The challenge with customer experience, then, is in the opposite direction: the risk of pushing ‘customerization’ too far.” Great insight. The same applies to cheerleading corporate initiatives. 

Done well, authenticity and employee-customer empowerment ring truer than a million smile grams. Happiness on demand? As McKinsey says, it’s only “feel-good, short-termism,” and that’s a view I support. 

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About Rev. Dylan Thomas Cotter: With over fifteen years of expertise in PR and strategy, Rev. Dylan Thomas Cotter stands out as a strategic advisor for elite clients across entertainment, technology, fitness, fashion and beauty. His dynamic life experience enhances his ability to elevate brand messages and drive impactful engagement.

A former adult entertainer, Dylan Thomas is proud gay transgender activist and author that has appeared in Vice, Rolling Stone, Out Magazine, Yahoo! News, Pride.com, Mashable, Inked Magazine, Well Beings News and Newsweek that happily resides in the Hollywood Hills with his partner.

His memoir Transgender & Triggering The Life of Dylan Thomas Cotter is available now at Barnes & Noble, Harvard Book Store, Book Soup and Skylight Books amongst other fine retailers and is distributed worldwide through Ingramspark.

Why you should approach pitching industry experts and influencers very differently — and, once you receive a response, act accordingly.

Pitching deals to industry experts versus pitching affiliate deals to influencers. Let’s talk about it. For those of you who don’t know, my name is Dylan Thomas Cotter, I’m a publicist. When you’re pitching anything to someone, it’s got to be of value to them, right? And so when you think of someone that you’re going to pitch something to, you have to think of their work history, their caliber of work, their expertise in the field, how their peers regard them. What they’re connected to professionally and it’s got to be of value to them otherwise you’re wasting their time.

What happens a lot with small business owners and startups is that they put together these affiliate plans that they think across the board is going to save them money. They either don’t have in-house marketing or they have such a cheap budget that they get like people who are entry level just so that they can lowball them there. So if you lowball anything in-house, you’re going to lowball it externally, right? And so what they do is they think by offering someone who is an industry expert in their field, the same affiliate offer that they offer to influencers online is acceptable. And it’s actually highly offensive.

So, let’s think of this in a lot of ways, right? If your in-house team or your CEO, however small your business is, is just basing offers of strategic partnerships based off of only social metrics, right? So, things to consider. Have you done a full audit of all those influencers followings to ensure that they’re real? And who are you looking to connect with? Are you looking to connect with that industry expert because they’re connected to other industry experts as well? Or are you looking to connect with an influencer who is connected mainly to the general public? Right? So we have to think of a strategy. What’s the smartest approach is to connect yourself with an industry expert. So their expertise, their time, their body of work. It’s not the level financially that’s going to be for an influencer.

So, if you pitch that kind of deal, cold pitch over email out of nowhere, no one knows your brand, no one knows who you are, that’s offensive. And so, as a publicist, you’ll get these emails through the channels of your client, and that will go back to you depending on how big your client’s team is. But you’ll handle those. I handled one today. I handled having to tell someone no again. See, I can do a polite first round no and leave the door open because that’s what we do as publicists. We don’t ever want to just be like f off. But if you blatantly ignore our first communication response to your initial offensive inquiry and try to pitch the exact same deal, that’s when you’re going to get the real firm no in the business. And so that’s when the door is going to close. And then we’re going to be pretty blunt and direct and say, “Okay. We have a failure to communicate here. This financial offer is offensive. Please unsubscribe our emails from any and all future communications.” And we wish them the best of success on their journey. And then we move on.

Because if you can’t listen to someone’s team in politely declining an offer, you will never listen to our client. And we know that. And that’s why we’ll say no again and again. And that’s how you keep yourself away from industry thought leaders. When you’re going to ask for anything in life, you have to bring the value that should come along with that. And if you’re going to put people’s staff through wasting their time, that’s how you’re making a name for yourself. Just understand that that’s how you make the name for yourself. And then that’s what we all remember. So first impressions are extremely important, especially when you’re cold pitching anyone. It’s just really important to bring your A game and then when you get a response, listen to what is on the other side. And if they say no and they’re still leaving the door open, sit and really think before you want to follow up on what they’re telling you is acceptable or not. But don’t come back with the exact same thing because what is the definition of insanity? It’s doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting a different response. You won’t get a different response. You’re just going to look ignorant.

Affiliate deals are not brand spokesperson deals. Affiliate deals are, you know, if you want them, great. There’s people out here that don’t, don’t want them. And you have to understand that not everyone is trying to inflate a following with fake people. People want quality followings and people want to be connected with their professional community. And so if you’re going just based off numbers, you can’t always quantify the level of strategic success you would get from partnering with someone who is a thought leader who may not have a million followers, but they have a substantial amount of followers that are in the rooms that you would also like your products in as well, but you chose not to listen to their team in the beginning. And so you haven’t been able to get your foot in the door and you’re wondering why. That’s why. When you’re approaching an influencer, different. When you’re approaching a thought leader who’s an actual expert in their field, different.

And then go ahead and learn for yourself. Learn how to audit the social followings and then learn how to audit someone’s professional body of work and go, “Wow, they’re connected in different places.” And no shade to any influencers because that is a profession that deserves a lot of respect. It takes a lot of hard work, a lot of time, but just because someone’s an influencer doesn’t mean that they’re an expert in their field. It just appears that they have a lot of eyes on them. And then again, what percentage of those eyes are actually real? You don’t know unless you audit it. So, you have to do a deep dive before you do a cold pitch.

Affiliate deals are not spokesperson deals. I prefer to say no politely once as opposed to having to send a second email to say no again. That is offensive.

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About Rev. Dylan Thomas Cotter: With over fifteen years of expertise in PR and strategy, Rev. Dylan Thomas Cotter stands out as a strategic advisor for elite clients across entertainment, technology, fitness, fashion and beauty. His dynamic life experience enhances his ability to elevate brand messages and drive impactful engagement.

A former adult entertainer, Dylan Thomas is proud gay transgender activist and author that has appeared in Vice, Rolling Stone, Out Magazine, Yahoo! News, Pride.com, Mashable, Inked Magazine, Well Beings News and Newsweekthat happily resides in the Hollywood Hills with his partner.

His memoir Transgender & Triggering The Life of Dylan Thomas Cotter is available now at Barnes & Noble, Harvard Book Store, Book Soup and Skylight Books amongst other fine retailers and is distributed worldwide through Ingramspark.