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Your Customer Isn’t Dumb. Your Brief Probably Is.
The problem isn’t your customer. It’s your clarity.
We’ve all been there.
Sales flatlining. Campaign’s live. Media money’s burning.
And someone in the room says it:
“Maybe the customer just doesn’t get it.”
I once sat in a post-mortem where the campaign had flopped — hard.
Zero lift. The senior marketer stared at the slides, shook his head, and muttered, “I don’t understand… we gave them everything. Promotions, influencers, even TikTok.”
Gave them everything — except a reason to care.
The brief had been a Frankenstein of buzzwords.
“Elevate brand relevance.” “Inspire discovery.”
It read like a slide deck that lost its soul halfway through.
The team scrambled to make it sing.
But the truth? There was no song. Just noise.
And when it didn’t work, we blamed the consumer.
As if she was too distracted, too price-sensitive, too “not our core audience.”
No. She just wasn’t fooled.
