Does anyone really care about your brand? Not unless you get your “ABC” right…

Some of the best marketing minds I’ve ever worked with have a great saying …

“Oh sh** - I think we’re just marketers talking to ourselves.”

What does that mean?

The Spotlight Effect

We spend so much of our time and effort in conference rooms talking about things like brand positioning, RTB’s and value propositions that it’s easy to lose sight of a simple truth: no one cares about those things.

Don’t get me wrong. Brand strategy is critical; without a strong brand foundation and comms strategy, you’re the captain of a rudderless ship.

But it’s easy to forget - our job in marketing is to make our brand matter to the consumer. We often assume, on some unconscious level, that because the brand matters to us, it will matter to them.

It’s called “The Spotlight Effect,” where you assume people care about your brand more than they actually do.

Marketers talking to themselves.

How To Get Perspective

At SRH, we use a simple framework to help you out of the spotlight effect: The “ABC”

Using this framework forces you to meet your audience where they’re at, instead of assuming they already care about you.

Let’s look at some examples from Geico.

Geico understands that people don’t spend their time thinking about car insurance.

People spend their time thinking about how much they hate Wednesdays and proving they’re not a robot online.

(If you haven’t seen those ads, they are A+ funny)

These spots are attention-grabbing because Geico brilliantly connected the dots between a truth about our lives and a truth about their brand.

The world is littered with ads that no one wants to watch. By using the ABC framework, you can escape the spotlight effect, ensuring your message hits home.

You just have to have the bravery to say, “Oh sh** - we’re just marketers talking to ourselves.”