Customers don't care

A fundamental mistake that almost all marketers make is in the assumption that people think about, or care about, brands.

Even for the world's biggest and most prominent brands, (Apple, Coke, Netflix etc etc) people pay very, very little conscious attention to them.

They don't lie awake at night and ponder the differences in the customer value proposition between supermarkets.

They don't spend time weighing up whether or not a clothing brand aligns with their personal values.

They don't laboriously scrutinise the copy in emailers, making personal judgments on the appropriate tonality of them.

Customers don't care.

They don't pay attention.

They don't read.

They're not consciously thinking about your brand.

And it is exactly this honest realisation that makes a massive difference as to how to successfully design commercial offerings in response.

• It reinforces the need to choose to invest significant budget in the ongoing development and communication of distinctive brand assets.
• It casts significant doubt on the practice of customer segmentation.
• It forces executive teams to be honest and truthful about the real health of their competitive positioning and the longer-term prospects of their offering.
• It highlights the reality that no brand (no matter how big or wonderful or powerful) is in possession of any kind of customer loyalty.

Accepting that customers don't care is sobering and ensures that decision-makers are under no illusion that any form of arrogance or hubris is justifiable.

There are countless cases of well-known brands that banked on the continued strength of their brand, only to be rudely brought down to earth by their own bounded rationality.