Ten signs you’re in the grip of your own Brand Vanity

Brand Vanity – marketing that still puts the company at the centre of strategy instead of the consumer and it’s 2019 already.

1.    You don’t explore, let alone try out any ideas, from your squad of Millennials simply because you’re doing a strategy as you’ve always done it.  With a template, using rehashed ideas, but now with a dash of digital to make it seem innovative. But’s it not.

2.    Your Strategic Plan has more dust than a French wine cellar. It’s ticking all the boxes because you’re doing all the things you promised, even if all of them aren’t exactly working. But you’re managing to hide this because your team is busy with other emergencies that keep them at work long after the cleaners have been in.

3.    You’re complaining in meetings that consumers aren’t doing what you want them to do so you invest more money and resources into doing the same old thing hoping it will finally work. You still believe that what you did three years ago is still going to save your bacon.

4.    Your communications and marketing team spend the majority of their time responding rather than instigating. Ambulance chasing has become the norm and meetings are spent discussing mitigation everything. People are too busy to promote the good news. Hey, what good news?

5.    You’ve offended our audience. Your blind spot has allowed you to approve something which is discriminatory, racist, sexist (add other words here folks) but you still smirk and say ‘Any publicity is good publicity’.

6.    Your spokespeople are still hiding behind holding statements and spending most of their time in interviews trying to dodge the question. And you don’t know that your audience is assessing you on your transparency. Your media trainer learned their craft in the 1980’s and haven’t move since.

7.    You and your team haven’t spent any time in the field to see how people are responding to your brand because you’re too busy responding to emails to people in the same department. The term ‘experiential’ or ‘activation’ still doesn’t excite you.

8.    You’re from the group that thinks that the amount of followers you have, even if you purchased them, means you’ve got an engaged audience. Urgh…

9.    You’re still using approaches where large segments audience to block you, hang up on you or report your posts because you can’t take no for an answer.

10. You didn’t keep reading to number 10 because you’re leading this showboat to nowheresville but all your staff members are sharing it amongst their peers