If You Are For Everyone, You Are For No One

Consumers aren’t looking for universal approval. They’re looking for themselves.

The money folks break out in a cold sweat when I point out that chasing everyone is the fastest route to irrelevance.

Think about how you actually buy things.  You scan shelves and scroll feeds but only stop when something feels like it was made for you.   A reflection of your personality.   A solution to an oddly specific problem that only you seem to have.

It’s very hard to see yourself in a message written for everybody.

This is where most brand strategy breaks down. In the conference room, universal appeal feels responsible.  Inclusive.  Safe.

In the market, it’s just noise.  And when you’re noise, you have only one weapon left: competing on price.  And we all know that’s a margin-erasing race to the bottom.

Premium brands do not happen by accident.  They happen when a brand has the courage to speak clearly to a specific group of people who recognize themselves in the story.

Think about JERRY MAGUIRE. Tom Cruise doesn’t circulate a memo about pleasing every possible client.  He writes a mission statement with a point of view.  Fewer clients.  Better relationships.  More humanity.  Granted, there was some short-term pain, but he won in the end!

Tommy took a risk. It was polarizing, but it also cut through the noise.  It actually meant something.

Brands should think the same way.

The goal is not vague popularity but dominance within a defined group.

A former jefe of mine ended a debate about target market size with one sentence I have never forgotten.

“I’ll take 50 percent market share.”

Not three percent of a giant, undefined audience.  Fifty percent of a specific one.  The kind of share that only happens when a brand becomes indispensable to the people it serves.

But brands are often too nervous to commit to this strategy.  And the irony is the narrower your aim, the further your message travels.

Please stop writing for the room.

Make something that is not for everyone.  That’s how you become everything to someone.