Bubble

Burst the bubble: your brand isn’t important

Most people don’t think about your brand. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not even when you’re launching that campaign you’ve been working on for six months.

It can be a hard truth for brand builders and marketeers to hear, especially for senior stakeholders who live and breathe the brand every day. But it’s also the most liberating, powerful realisation you can have. Because when you stop assuming your brand is front-of-mind, you start seeing it through the eyes of real people. And that’s where better thinking begins.

The brand bubble is real
Inside most businesses, especially at leadership levels, the brand looms large. It’s the topic of internal presentations, strategy sessions, workshops, and debate. Over time, it becomes a self-reinforcing loop: the more you talk about the brand, the more important it feels. Soon, there’s a risk that decisions are made based on internal opinion, not external reality.

This is the brand bubble. And the only way to burst it is to re-anchor yourself through humility. To get real about how little time the average consumer spends thinking about your brand, and how low down their priority list it usually sits.

Why this is good news
At first, this might feel deflating. But it’s actually a good thing. Because when you realise your brand isn’t a daily obsession for most people, you start asking the right questions.

Instead of “what do we want to say?”, you ask “what will work in their world?”

Instead of “how do we get them to love us?”, you ask “how do we become useful, easy to choose, or more memorable?”

Instead of obsessing over tiny tonal shifts or logo placement, you focus on what truly matters to the people you’re trying to reach.

When the pressure to somehow be profound lifts, clarity emerges.

Proximity distortion
Marketing departments are often too immersed in their own messaging. It’s not vanity; it’s proximity. But proximity brings distortion. You start to mistake repetition for recognition, or attention for affection.

That’s why the most valuable mindset shift is to one of humble detachment.

Step back. Ask yourself: if you weren’t paid to care about this brand, would you? When you puncture that balloon, when you wear their shoes, you look at the world as it really is; messy, distracted, busy, full of competing priorities. And you start building brands that meet people in that reality, not the imagined one.

 

The higher you rise, the smaller the target
This isn’t just a job for insight teams or junior marketers. Senior stakeholders especially need consumer closeness. Because the higher up you go, the easier it is to drift away from real-world context.

It’s why some of the best brand leaders spend time on the shop floor, in people’s homes, or scrolling through Trustpilot comments. Not to chase trends, but to stay grounded. To avoid ivory tower thinking. To remember that marketing lives out in the world, not on slides.

 

And it’s not about lowering ambition, it’s about recalibrating it. Great brands aren’t the centre of their consumers’ lives they’re the reliable shortcuts that help us out in day-to-day. When you accept your place, you can show up with more relevance, more humility, and more impact. Your brand is not the hero in your customer’s story… they are. And that’s not a problem. That’s the brief.

Work out how to drop the ego, embrace humility, and focus on building brands that fit into real lives not just PowerPoint slides. Because in the end, being important to people starts by assuming that you’re not.

 

David Preston is founder of The Crow Flies, a research, strategy and innovation company that helps brands find a direct route to long lasting success.  david@thecrowflies.co.uk; +44 (0) 1889 725670 ; www.thecrowflies.co.uk; @crowflieshigh. © The Crow Flies, 2025

Beware the bubble

Having moved from ‘client side’ brand building to ‘agency side’ after twenty years (something I’m consistently told is quite unusual), I’m often asked what advice I would give to marketeers running brands in business today. Well, rather like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, the big thing is to beware the bubble:

The bubble of belief that you understand consumers.
Understanding people is a lifelong pastime. It requires on-going curiosity and nosiness. It absolutely requires the belief that you can be proved wrong at any time.

The bubble of belief that in your business ‘that’s how life is’.
I used to fall for this one. That somehow, the air here is rarer, special, unique. That we have to work harder or longer in order to stay competitive. It’s not. You’re not. Challenge yourself all the time as to how you can simplify what you do and how you do it. How you can have a bigger impact with less resource in less time.

The bubble of delusion that your brand really matters
No brand is un-replaceable. Go in with that attitude, a bit of brand humility, keep it close, and you won’t go far wrong.

The bubble of confidence that belies what consumers really think
If you ever find yourself sitting in a research group, and think ‘we know this already’ … stop yourself. If you do know it, are you acting on it? I’m constantly flabbergasted by how the simple insights or the obvious problems to solve aren’t being worked on (often because they’re seen as generic, or owned by another brand. Are they? Really? Really?)

Slide1The bubble of brand immortality
Brands are entities created by humans that have a lifecycle. Not a smooth one like in the textbooks, but a lifecycle nonetheless. You can eat healthily and you can stay fit. So can brands. But ultimately your brand will die. Manage the portfolio carefully and ensure that you pass on anything you touch in better condition than when it was handed to you. But when it’s time to go, cut the cord and focus on the next generation.

The bubble of hype
Stay close to market developments. Be interested in consumers, in retailers. Be interested in the world of your agencies not just companies. Read and listen and get out more. But don’t forget that brand building is a skill and has core disciplines – research, strategy, innovation, planning, design, communications – be the best you can be at these to the level appropriate to your role today and where you want to go tomorrow.

The bubble of capacity and capability
If you find yourself being asked to do this and this and this and this. If, you believe you can… then pause. Forget the stereotypes about women can multi-task and men can’t, the point is this. We can only be effective if we focus on given tasks and execute them thoroughly. Same for brands. Do less. Sacrifice – not prioritise and slice – sacrifice; and then put everything into hammering them into the market and the minds of your target.

The bubble of self-importance
You’re just someone making their way in the world. Beware the trappings of power and try to stay humble, open and connected.


David Preston is founder of The Crow Flies, a research, strategy, innovation and brand planning company that finds the direct route to success for categories and brands. david@thecrowflies.co.uk // +44 (0) 1889 725670.   You can follow The Crow Flies on Linked In (http://www.linkedin.com/company/the-crow-flies-ltd?trk=company_name), on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/thecrowfliesltd).

© The Crow Flies, 2018