Marketing that Sucks: Part 6
Example #6: Barely Keeping Your Brand Afloat by Refusing to Hire Graphic Design Experts
Successful business people often think – correctly – that they know their business best. This sometimes translates into the assumption that they can thus do everything for their business better than outsiders. Guess what? Those people are wrong. Especially when it comes to marketing specialties like graphic design, which is an essential part of brand positioning, you really need to lose the ego and hire graphic design experts.
Here’s an example – I recently met with a company that is, by all accounts, very successful in their industry. But in order for them to really compete at the highest level for their business, their brand, particularly their graphic design, needed an overhaul. Their website, collateral, logo and more all looked out-of-date. They smartly decided they needed to hire a marketing team to help them move forward.
Then, they not-so-smartly ignored much of what we said and proceeded to share their own logo mockups and branding ideas. Their team members, none of whom have a background in marketing, let alone design, had sketched up some rough ideas. While there is, of course, value in hearing from the team, their mistake was in thinking they could do better than marketing and design professionals.
The takeaway? Just because you know your business well does not mean you can think like a marketer and create beautiful brand imagery like professional graphic design experts.
This team is still trying to make the badly needed updates to their brand, but because they’ve refused the help of marketing pros, they are behind on their deadline and still stuck where they were. So while they may be able to keep their brand afloat on their own, they’re definitely not going to make any waves in their industry.
