Real People Don’t Think a Lot About Your Brand

Your target consumer probably doesn’t think about your brands as often as you would like to think so. Real people are not marketers.

My all-time favorite Marketoonist cartoon is printed in my home office. It serves as a good reminder that our ego should not come front and center in our attempt to understand real people.

To add to the fire, a 5-year-old study in the UK concluded that respondents would not care if 77% of the brands they use would disappear the next day. You can read the report interpretation here.

One thing is sure; we are surrounded by so many concepts, ideas, brands, and products that, more often than not, we decide to ignore them and move on. It doesn’t mean that we stop using them, but we don’t care so much about it.

Some brands achieve cult status, but those are the ones that pass the survivorship bias test. Most brands don’t matter to real people.

So stop assuming all your consumers do all day is thinking about your brand. Once accepting this, you become more powerful. You open doors to more meaningful debates with your colleagues and agencies, elevate the conversation from brand-led to category-led, and stay true to what you are a consumer marketer, not a brand marketer.

That’s why I know 100% brand loyalty exists. And brand love is a concept you should not waste too much time with. And Harley Davidson or Apple are not the icons you should copy when you build the strategy for your shampoo, chewing gum, or oat-meal brand.