the best marketers will tell you that the best marketers are consumer-centric. they listen to their customers’ ideas and deliver against them. but that’s wrong and here are two reasons why:

1. one of the biggest lessons I learned in my entrepreneurial classes at stanford is that the customer doesn’t always know what they want. do you think 10 years ago customers would have liked the idea of interacting with each other 140 characters or less at a time? probably not, yet twitter is the hottest topic on planet right now. until truly exposed, people don’t always know what they want. sometimes listening to customers can stifle your ideas and you end up settling for status quo.
2. we all use the same data. we all listen to the same customers who are telling us all the same thing! that’s why every single marketing campaign looks the same right now. customers are telling us it’s all about price/value so we are all talking price and value in the same straight forward way they asked us to. follow your customers and you’ll look like the person next door.

in his brilliant book, eating the big fish, adam morgan advocates for being ‘consumer-intimate, but idea-led.’ essentially, you should understand your customer inside/out but they should never lead you. great brands serve as a lighthouse to help customers navigate the world. you can’t help people navigate if you are simply showing them a mirror. in order to differentiate yourself and deliver the highest value you have to listen and then present them with newer, bigger, better ideas.

life. the same is true in life. we listen to feedback from every tom, dick, and harry. while i am the first person to advocate for getting feedback, it is your responsibility to take that feedback, filter it back through who you are, and generate ideas/improvements that deliver value in a way that is fresh and new. how many times has your boss, boyfriend, or friend said, “well, so and so does it like this.” imitating so and so will may make whoever temporarily happy but at best you have put yourself at parity (in a world where being different matters) and shown that you can be a great copy cat. and that’s why you look like everybody else.

-written from the desk of my iPhone

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• branding
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• differentiation
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• personal branding