Why Being an Insider Might Be Killing Your Client's Marketing

There’s a paradox in marketing today: the more “in bed” you are with your client, the more detached you can become from their consumer. It sounds counterintuitive: Shouldn’t proximity make you smarter? Closer to the source? More effective?

Only if the “source” is the audience.

“We start marketing to our clients rather than their audiences.”

Too often, marketers become insiders to brand politics, internal jargon, and outdated assumptions. We become connoisseurs of slide decks and Teams chats, fluent in KPIs but tone-deaf to what customers actually care about. We start marketing to our clients rather than their audiences.

This kind of inside-baseball brand loyalty leads to echo chamber creative. It’s why you still see six-figure video shoots that no one watches, taglines that mean everything internally and nothing externally, and product stories so “authentic” they’re indistinguishable from everyone else’s.  Hello single prompt AI!

“Great marketing lives outside of HQ.”

Great marketing lives outside of HQ. It’s in the chaotic, uncensored wild where the gen pop laugh, scroll, swipe, rage, buy. It’s what they trash talk in forums, not what’s pitched in boardrooms. Memes, not mission statements, folks!

Similar to in-laws, we need some distance. Distance to see the forest, not an org chart.

“Similar to in-laws, we need some distance.”

Does this mean we can’t love our clients?  Hells no.  But let’s make sure we don’t love them TOO much. Get curious. ID consumer problems. Eavesdrop on teenagers. Being the outsider is our superpower.

After all, the French Revolution didn’t start inside Versailles.