Skip to content

Don’t Confuse Your Customers

We often remind our clients that when it comes to your brand and to your marketing you really need to KISS. (Keep it simple, stupid.) While your message or promotion may make perfect sense to you, it may be confusing to your customer. Remember that you live and breathe your brand everyday and some people may have trouble connecting the dots of your marketing campaign.

The reason that we bring this up today is that we were kind of confused by something recently. We were gathered together at a neighborhood Starbuck’s to have a work meeting. We were hit (almost literally) by a large display right inside the door. It was for a new chai tea that had both the Teavana logo and Oprah’s smiling face. There was a small sign explaining that it was a new tea to help support children.

Of course our radars for brand stuff are up more than the average person so we took notice. But, why was Teavana stuff at a Starbuck’s? Isn’t that a competitor? Why is Oprah making chai tea? Why is her head shot now all over the place? The message seemed to be a bit muddled.

Being the marketing geeks that we are, we went to the Starbuck’s website to learn more. Now a lot of people at Starbucks would be happy to know that we did that. However, we are probably in the minority. Most people aren’t going to take the time to try to figure out the marketing message.

The lesson for all of you out there is that you need to keep things simple when communicating to your customers. People have a very short attention span and they will tune you out as soon as they get even a little bit confused.

 

 

 

 

Back To Top